Tag: Scripture

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Human Agency in Relation to Verbal Inspiration

The doctrine of verbal inspiration should not be confused with a kind of mania that eliminates human agency.[1] When the Bible and the later Lutheran scholastics speak of verbal inspiration, they do not mean that God took over the minds of the prophets and apostles so that they ceased to function consciously as the men they were.

Nevertheless, it is very common to hear modern scholars and theologians attack the theologians of scholastic orthodoxy for essentially teaching such a doctrine. For example, Matthew Becker suggests that verbal inspiration and inerrancy erase human agency in the production of the Scriptures.[2] Becker claims Johann Gerhard taught that divine inspiration makes the inspired author like a flute played by God.[3] Such a claim lacks validity: Gerhard never uses such an analogy in his treatment of inspiration.

The manic concept of inspiration actually is present not in the Protestant scholastics but in the Ante-Nicene fathers. Indeed, one finds the flute analogy for divine inspiration in the second-century apologist Athenagoras.[4] As men of their time and cultural milieu, these theologians often borrowed this concept of inspiration from earlier Jewish and Hellenistic sources. Within the Palestinian Jewish tradition, the intertestamental Book of Jubilees (second century B.C.) speaks of Moses receiving the Torah as a whole on Mt. Sinai in the form of heavenly tablets.[5] This concept suggests an extraordinarily crude notion of inspiration as a kind of literal dictation.

Likewise, pagan Hellenistic culture possessed a concept of prophecy that was manic. Inspiration was understood as a state wherein the rationality and self-consciousness of the individual disappeared and was replaced by the divine agent, whatever form that might take.[6] Taking over this conception as part of their cultural assimilation, some Hellenistic Jews (notably Philo of Alexandria) came to think of Moses and the prophets as entering a kind of trance state brought on by the power of the Spirit.[7] Although Hellenistic Jews and the later Ante-Nicene fathers generally did not think the prophets and apostles had behaved in an irrational manner in the state of inspiration,[8] they nevertheless did speak of God taking over their minds.[9]

Although admittedly there are portions of the Bible where those prophesying enter into a trancelike state (1 Sm 10:10–12; 19:24), there is no evidence to suggest that such a state led to the production of the Scriptures themselves. Indeed, writings like the Psalms embody a genuinely human voice that prays, laments, repents, and praises God. At the same time the Psalms repeatedly are referred to by Jesus and the New Testament authors as divine prophecy and therefore the very voice of God (Mk 12:35–37; Jn 10:30–36; Acts 4:25–26; Heb 2:6–8, etc.).

[1] Franzmann, “New Testament View of Inspiration,” 746.

[2] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 305–6.

[3] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 305.

[4] See Leslie William Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 76.

[5] Leslie Baynes, The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses 200 BCE–200 CE (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 110.

[6] See Christopher Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and Its Hellenistic Environment (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 124–42.

[7] For example, Philo writes of prophecy: “No pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own; he is an interpreter prompted by another in all his utterances . . . when knowing not what he does he is filled with inspiration, as the reason withdraws and surrenders the citadel of his soul to a new visitor and tenant, the Divine Spirit which plays upon his vocal organism and dictates words which clearly express its prophetic message.” Philo, De specialibus legibus 4.49. Cited in Henri Blocher, “God and the Scripture Writers,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2016), 503.

[8] Charles Hill, “‘The Truth above All Demonstration’: Scripture in the Patristic Period to Augustine,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, 81–83.

[9] Blocher, “God and the Scripture Writers,” 503–4; Preus, “View of the Bible,” 363.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 132-133.

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The Word Opens God to Abuse

In spite of this glorious fulfillment, God’s Word must always withstand opposition from His fallen creatures. Testing must precede validation. As in the life of Christ, humiliation always precedes glory, and trial always precedes vindication. Indeed, the reality of testing and opposition to God’s Word reveals the deep kenotic dimension to the act of revelation. Through His Word God not only reveals Himself, His will, and His purpose but is sacramentally present in it by the power of the Spirit (Mt 18:20; 28:20; Gal 3:2). God’s eternal Word, without losing its uncreated power and glory, kenotically makes itself available and tangible through the medium of finite human words. By making Himself known and tangible through His revelation in means, God opens Himself up to rejection, blasphemy, and abuse by His creatures.

Indeed, one suspects that this is the motivation behind Aquinas and Barth’s previously discussed theories of revelational analogy. If God makes Himself to be known in a merely analogical echo, then He does not fully open Himself up to the possibility of blasphemous abuse, misuse, or rejection of His Word. If God does not fully identify Himself with the means of grace, then He is saved from being rejected and abused when they are rejected and abused.

Aquinas and Barth’s revelational analogy is of course the logical corollary of their thoroughly Leonine view of the incarnation, wherein the communication idiomatum is little more than notional.[1] Nevertheless, as Luther notes, a God who does not communicate Himself fully to the flesh of Christ and suffer abuse is ultimately of no use to us.[2] And a God who has not communicated Himself fully to the external Word as both propositional truth and effective presence is of no use to His sinful creatures in need of “grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). If God is not fully present in His Word then He remains distant and hidden from His creatures, and they cannot grasp Him for the sake of their salvation. Just as the very Word of God made flesh submitted Himself to abuse and blasphemy on the cross and yet triumphed in the resurrection, in giving His external Word God submits Himself to abuse and opposition, and yet triumphs in either the creation of faith or the hardening of judgment.

[1] See my description in “Thomas Aquinas and Martin Chemnitz on the Hypostatic Union,” Lutheran Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2013): 1–32.

[2] Regarding Zwingli’s attempt to separate the two natures in Christ, Luther writes: “Beware, beware, I say, of this alloeosis, for it is the devil’s mask since it will finally construct a kind of Christ after whom I would not want to be a Christian, that is, a Christ who is and does no more in his passion and his life than any other ordinary saint. For if I believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would be a poor savior for me, in fact, he himself would need a Savior. In short, it is indescribable what the devil attempts with this alloeosis.” Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528 (AE 37:209–10; WA 26:319).

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 67.

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Inerrancy and the Sacramental Nature of Scripture

By contrast, the confessional Lutheran commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture is based on the sacramental nature of Scripture. Just as the reality of grace in the sacraments is hidden in and under the physical elements and is recognizable only due to the word of promise attached to them, God’s Word in Scripture is recognizable as such because of the dominical promise of infallibility Christ has attached to the authors and their words. Hence, calling into question the inerrancy of the Bible also means calling into question the validity of the sacraments. If Christ’s promise remains good for the sacraments, then it should hold for the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Because Christ has risen from the dead, thereby validating all He has said and done, we must believe Him over our fallen and finite human reason. Indeed, as Luther aptly states in the Large Catechism regarding the promise of Christ: “Because we know that God does not lie. I and my neighbor and, in short, all men, may err and deceive, but the Word of God cannot err.”[1] If [Matthew] Becker wishes to accept the validity of the sacraments (as one suspects he does) but not the inerrancy of Scripture, then he must insist on arbitrarily rejecting one of Christ’s dominical promises while accepting the others.[2]

Finally, as observed earlier with regard to [Rudolf] Bultmann, the Gospel cannot be isolated from the scriptural worldview, narrative, and other dogmas of the faith. As we have shown repeatedly, while the Gospel is the central article (Hauptartikel) of the faith, it nevertheless does not exhaust the content of the Christian faith. Neither does the Gospel exist in isolation from other revealed truths. By analogy we may say that if the Scriptures are like a wheel, the Gospel is the axle and the other articles of the faith like the spokes. Although an axle is central to the functioning of a wheel, the wheel is in fact non-functional without the spokes.[3]

In the same manner, the Gospel is ultimately a solution to the problem of the sin committed originally by Adam and Eve and transmitted to their descendants. Adam and Eve could sin only because they were creatures who violated the Law of their creator God. Similarly, Christ’s atoning work would be incoherent without the doctrines of the Trinity or the incarnation or the background of the whole history of Israel. The difficulty with Becker wishing to make the Gospel the ultimate criterion of all theological authority is that the Gospel does not make sense without the context of the total witness of the Bible and hence its inerrant authority.[4] If I believe the Gospel as true unconditionally, then I must believe the whole Bible as unconditionally true.

[1] LC IV (Bente, 747).

[2] Reu makes a similar point. See Johann Michael Reu, Lutheran Dogmatics (Dubuque: Wartburg Theological Seminary, 1951), 459–60.

[3] This is a common analogy within many conservative Lutheran circles. Nevertheless, I thank the Rev. David Fleming for first alerting me to it.

[4] Becker, Fundamental Theology, 285.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 110-111.

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The Function and Proclamation of Holy Scriptures

The ultimate goal of the inspiration and writing of Holy Scripture is the oral proclamation of the Word within the life of the church. In turn, the ultimate purpose of the proclamation of the Word is to give Christ and His promise to creatures of faith. The written Scriptures, like sacraments, are nothing less than a delivery system for the truth and presence of the crucified and risen Christ (Mt 18:20; Lk 10:16; Jn 6:63; 2 Tm 3:15).[1] Robert Preus observes that such a view is in accordance with the teaching of the Lutheran scholastics, who understood Scripture “assumes its true significance only when viewed soteriologically, [that is] when considered as an operative factor in God’s plan of salvation.”[2]

Therefore, contrary to the assumptions of much of modern Protestantism (whether liberal or conservative), the Bible is not an abstract authority, properly understood by rational and autonomous human beings within the sphere of their own subjective solitude (2 Pt 1:20). It is not a compendium of abstract bits of heavenly information that can be picked apart and assembled in order to say virtually anything. Rather, Scripture’s proper purpose is to be proclaimed and understood in the midst of the church and its sacramental life of forgiveness. Consequently, the presence of the risen Christ and the forgiveness He offers in the midst of the church is the lodestar for any proper understanding of the purpose and meaning of Holy Scripture.

This fact comes into particular focus when one considers that before it was written down as Sacred Scripture, the Word of God was first transmitted orally within the assembly of Israel and the liturgical-sacramental life of the early church. Luther frequently observed that the Word of God was written down only so that it might be preserved and therefore orally proclaimed with greater certainty.[3] Even if one ignores the role that Holy Scripture possesses in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church, it should be noted that in the ancient world all written texts were intended for oral performance insofar as reading was almost never done silently.[4] Therefore, as an ancient text, Scripture is by definition meant for oral proclamation.

Jesus authorized the apostles as His infallible witnesses (and therefore as the infallible authors of Scripture) simultaneous with His authorization of the Word and sacraments of the church (Mt 28:19–20; Lk 10:16; Jn 16:13; Acts 1:8). This correspondence suggests that the authority of Holy Scripture and the authoritative ministry of the church are not separable but function properly only when understood in the light of one another. Some might object that the commissions cited above are authorizations merely of the preaching of the Word, not of the writing of the New Testament itself.[5] This is an incorrect interpretation for a number of reasons.

[1] Johann Baier, Compendium Theologiae Positivae, ed. C. F. W. Walther, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Emmanuel Press, 2005–2006), 1:117–18; Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and Scripture, 333.

[2] Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, 170; cited from Webster, Holy Scripture, 40.

[3] First Sunday in Advent (WA 10/1:2.48). “The church is a mouth-house, not a pen-house.” Cited from Mark Thompson, A Sure Ground on Which to Stand: The Relation of Authority and Interpretive Method of Luther’s Approach to Scripture (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2004), 75.

[4] Ben Witherington III, New Testament Rhetoric: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 1–2, 90.

[5] Robert Bellarmine and many early modern Roman Catholic apologists made this argument. See Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology, 51–58. See a modern objection along the same lines in James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, and Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 12.

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 89-90.