J, NacGregor 
 
 Nature of the 
 Divine Inspiration of Scripture 
 
 BS480 
 .MI4& 
 
.^^:0^^'^^^^^^ 
 
 '"] 
 
 :>'^y 
 
 BS.480 
 

 4^ " '■'"' 
 
 DEC 171S25 
 
 BRITISH AND FOREIGN 
 
 EVANGELICAL REVIEW, 
 
 APRIL 188 0. 
 7 
 
 Art. I. — Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scriioture. 
 
 [The following Notes are to some extent an expansion of a paper read by 
 ine to a clerical club. Members of the club expressed a desire and 
 expectation that the paper should be laid before the public. One 
 reason of this desire was that the notes, as submitted to the club, were 
 so aphoristic in form that members desired to see them in print for 
 leisurely consideration. There is nothing in the original notes which 
 the club discussion has induced me to alter in substance. But I now 
 reproduce the paper in the light of that discussion, which means 
 with very important advantages beyond what I had enjoyed in solitary 
 study.] 
 
 T^HE preparation of this paper was originally occasioned by a 
 -*- suggestion to the effect that those who dogmatise copi- 
 ously about inspiration do not, as a class, know very well 
 what they are dogmatising about. Not a few good and true 
 men are at this hour persuaded that the dogma of plenary 
 verbal inspiration of Scripture is incompetent in the present 
 state of knowledge and comprehension in our Evangelical 
 Churches. 
 
 Under the form of discussion the paper is occupied mainly 
 with definition rather than demonstration. In relation to the 
 subject as regarded by intelligent advocates of a veritable 
 divine inspiration of Scripture all through, my notes are 
 
 VOL. XXIX. — NO. cxii. o 
 
4 
 
 202 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 intended mainly for the purpose of clearing away obscurities 
 which at this time are working mischief, as all darkness is the 
 advancing shadow of death. 
 
 The distinction between revelation and inspiration, though 
 continually asserted by one class of theologians, is continually 
 ignored, or rejected as unreal and illusory, by another class. 
 Yet the distinction is founded in the nature of things. Ee- 
 velation is that through which rational beings come into pos- 
 session of information ; while inspiration is that through which 
 they come to communicate that information — no matter how 
 obtained. Thus, in relation to a scripture or book, the record 
 of a revelation : — while the revelation question is. What is the 
 source of the information ? the inspiration question is. Who 
 is the author of the book, or scripture, or record ? 
 
 So Shakespeare, the " all-round " man, after describing 
 "the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," as receiving some 
 revelation when it glances " from heaven to earth, from earth to 
 heaven," goes on to describe an ulterior process, in which " tlie 
 poet's 'pen' records what his eye has seen, so as to "give to 
 airy nothings a local habitation and a name." 
 
 It is not necessary here to speak of the revelation as super- 
 natural Of the information recorded in Scripture a large 
 part may, by the human authors of Scripture, have been ob- 
 tained from sources within reach of men in the natural use of 
 their faculty of knowledge. For instance, the non-scriptural 
 records appealed to in the Old Testament Scriptures, and the 
 testimonies referred to in the preface of Luke's Gospel, may 
 have been simply human records of matters patent to every 
 human eye looking on the events of the history of God's king- 
 dom. But the supposition that Luke obtained information 
 from other men, who from the beginning had been eye- 
 witnesses of the Word, does not imply that Luke was not the 
 human author of the third Gospel, nor that what is said in that 
 history is not said by him. The supposition that Moses and 
 other Old Testament writers made use of previously existing 
 documents, or unwritten traditions, does not impl}^ that certain 
 scriptures have not Moses and other Old Testament prophets 
 or scribes for their authors. Fronde's History of England is 
 not the less Fronde's because he makes copious use of materials 
 which had existed long before his time. 
 
Inspiration distinct from Revelation. 203 
 
 It thus appears that the question regarding tlie source of 
 information recorded in a book is distinct from the question 
 regarding the authorship of the record. And the inspiration 
 question has reference only to the authorship of the record, 
 while the revelation question has reference only to the source 
 of information recorded. On the one hand, though the source 
 of information should be simply human, the authorship of the 
 record, the inspiration of the book, may be divine ; e.g., while 
 the genealogies so frequently appearing in Scripture may have 
 originally been prepared simply by men in the ordinary course 
 of political administration, yet the authorship of the Scripture 
 qxia recording them may be properly divine and miraculous, 
 God choosing to place in a record which is distinctively divine 
 materials obtainable through simply human inquiry. On the 
 other hand, a record may be simply human in its authorship 
 though the source of the information recorded should be truly 
 divine and miraculous. For instance, the great facts of dis- 
 tinctively supernatural revelation are, let us suppose, correctly 
 recorded in the systems of Augustine and Calvin, or in the 
 creeds and confessions of Evangelical Churches ; yet the records, 
 in the shape of those utterances of individuals and of Churches, 
 are, in the view of Evangelical Christians, simply human. 
 
 The divine inspiration of Scripture means, that of the Record 
 in our hands the autlior is God, in such a sense that the Bible 
 is properly God's Word, — that what the Scripture says is said 
 by Him. To say this is specifically distinct from saying that 
 the revelation comes from Him directly or remotely. For, as 
 we have seen, the source of the material recorded may be 
 different from the authorship of the record. Hence, in relation 
 to the authorship of the record, it does not suffice to speak of 
 presentation, somehow, of truth or view to the human mind, so 
 that this mind is able to apprehend it. After that apprehension 
 — which may be effected through the poet's eye, or the pro- 
 phet's, or the historian's, or the dogmatist's — there may come 
 in a specifically different thing, the committing of the same to 
 writing, putting the vision on paper. That is what we have 
 now to think about in relation to the record of revelation as 
 distinguished from the revelation recorded. 
 
 ^Vhat we now say of the record, in the sense of supernatural 
 intimation of God's mind by God, may be applicable to other 
 
204 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 modes of intimation of God's mind by God. For instance, the 
 symbolism of the Tabernacle and Temple may have resulted, 
 not simply from Divine communication of ideas to men, but 
 from Divine determination of every detail of the symbolism ; 
 so that Israel, in looking at the ordinary service of worship, 
 may have been consciously receiving directly the mind of God 
 from God, as truly as when listening to His articulate utterance 
 of the Ten Words at Sinai. Again, when prophets spoke 
 articulate words, it is conceivable that their spoken utterance 
 should be so completely determined by the informing power 
 of God as to make the utterances to be properly His word. 
 
 What we thus suggest is that the Bible, the record of 
 revelation, is properly an oracular hook. And when we speak 
 of the Bible as an oracular book, we represent the feeling of 
 the whole Christian world in relation to the Bible. This 
 suggestion of theologians is anticipated by the experience of 
 Christians. It is a matter of Christian experience that the 
 Bible is an oracular book. Christendom reposes upon the 
 belief that the utterances of this book are properly oracles of 
 God ; and this has been so from the beginning of Christian 
 Church-history. It has been imagined by some that the dogma 
 of divine inspiration of Scripture, as distinguished from 
 divine revelation recorded in Scripture, is of recent origin, 
 dating, say, from the time of Clericus or Spinoza, two hundred 
 years ago ; that at this recent period it came into being as a 
 mere makeshift for evasion of difficulties occasioned by the 
 discovery, then made for the first time, of " mistakes " in the 
 Scripture record. But this imagination is a hallucination 
 regarding the relative course of Christian thought, and feeling, 
 and life. 
 
 The sort of "mistakes" alleged by Spinoza, and employed 
 by Clericus for subversion of the received doctrine of inspira- 
 tion, had been alleged by another famous Jew far back in the 
 Middle Ages. The same sort of alleged mistakes had, for the 
 same purpose, been adduced by Theodore of Mopsuestia in the 
 primitive " Age of the Councils." And the received doctrine 
 of inspiration, as meaning that the Bible is a properly oracular 
 book, so far from having been invented as a makeshift for 
 meeting the difficulties occasioned to faith by the speculations 
 even of Theodore, is demonstrably as old as the Christian 
 
Inspiration mid Canonicity. 205 
 
 religion. In the primitive age of that religion, the very ratio 
 decidendi in relation to the canonical authority of this and that 
 book, was that this and that book are properly of divine 
 inspiration. And all down from the first century to our 
 nineteenth century the feeling and belief of Christendom have 
 reposed on the supposition, not simply that the Christian 
 religion is of divine revelation, but that the Bible is a divine 
 record of that revelation. 
 
 It is quite conceivaljle that a primitive divine revelation 
 should have been left to be recorded by simply human inspira- 
 tion or authorship. It is of great importance to remember 
 that the character and history of the Christian Church, and the 
 records contained in our Scriptures, though these should be 
 regarded as simply hiiman in their authorship, cannot be 
 reasonably accounted for except upon the supposition of an 
 original divine revelation, involving a miraculous intervention 
 of God in history for the redemption of lost men. From the 
 external apologetic point of view this is so important that 
 Christian apologists are naturally impatient or doubtful in 
 relation to a view received from within the heart of the 
 Christian system. But the view received from within the 
 heart of the Christian system is that upon which the apologists 
 themselves, so far as they are Christian, live, and which has 
 all along lain at the root of Christian life in God. And that 
 view is that the record of revelation is divine. 
 
 It is conceivable that the record should be so connected 
 with the revelation that the one has genetically sprung from the 
 other by a sort of physical necessity ; so that the revelation 
 being given, the record in its distinctive character follows as 
 matter of course. It is conceivable, in other words, that the 
 revelation should be energic to such an extent as to determine 
 the very terms of the record. This however does not follow 
 from the received doctrine of inspiration. Consistently with 
 that doctrine the revelation and the record are not so connected 
 by a bond of physical necessity ; God having given the revela- 
 tion direct from Himself might conceivably have left the 
 record to be originated by simply human authorship. 
 
 Piash views of the meaning of divine inspiration are often 
 implied when they are not expressed. It has of late been 
 frequently represented as one problem left over to the theology 
 
2o6 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 of oar time, how to deliver the Church from a doctrine of 
 mechanical inspiration ; and it has been too easily assumed 
 that " dictation" would involve mechanism of inspiration, 
 incompatible with the rational nature of man, and therefore 
 not to be supposed without impiety as having been perpetrated 
 by Him who is the Creator of man's nature. Dictation does 
 not necessarily imply violence to man's nature as rational. I 
 am dictating at this moment without violence to the rational 
 [nature of the scribe. There was no violence to the nature of 
 Moses as rational when he received the Ten Words as written 
 by God's finger on the tables of stone. There was no violence 
 done to the rational nature of Balaam when he was constrained 
 to bless where he would have preferred to ban. Those who 
 assume as matter of course that " dictation" must necessarily 
 imply a violence to man's nature as rational thus appear to be 
 mistaken in their assumption. 
 
 But the assumption, mistaken or not, is really irrelevant. 
 For the received doctrine of inspiration does not professedly 
 involve mechanism in the process of divine communication 
 through man. It may appear to require some hardihood to 
 maintain this ; for able men are now-a-days frequently found 
 assuming as mere matter of course that the received doctrine 
 does involve supersession of human personality and individu- 
 ality. Some of those able men have taken pains to prove, 
 from the utterances of " old dogmatists," that it is the express 
 intention of the received doctrine of inspiration to exclude 
 human personality and individuality, i.e. reality of manhood, 
 from the authorship of Scripture. But to contradict those 
 able men does not necessarily imply hardihood of assertion ; 
 all that it necessarily implies is knowledge of plain historical 
 fact and of elementary logic. For the assumption of those 
 able men is mistaken, and their attempted proof a demonstrable 
 failure. 
 
 There has not been much published in the way of 
 attempted proof of the assertion that the " old dogmatists," 
 in contending for divinity of authorship of Scripture, mean to 
 exclude humanity of authorship. And what has been pub- 
 lished in this way, so far as known to me, is worse than incon- 
 clusive — is perverse or M^rong-headed. In this relation the 
 well-known utterances about the inspired writers being " flutes" 
 
Can pens of God be Jmman pens ? 207 
 
 of God, or " pens" of God, are quite irrelevant. For a "pen" 
 of God may be a human pen : a man whose personality and 
 individuality are not destroyed in order that God may speak 
 through an unmanned organism, but employed for the expres- 
 sion of God's mind through man. Hence, merely to show that 
 the "old dogmatists" regard man as having been employed by 
 God, is to be far from showing that, in the estimation of those 
 " old dogmatists," the man was destroyed when God employed 
 him, or became a mere machine when he was made the instru- 
 ment — " flute," or " pen," — of divine inspiration. 
 
 The " old dogmatists" certainly did not mean that the man 
 was unmanned who became the organ of inspiration truly 
 divine. That they did mean this is maintained, e.g. by Eothe, 
 in his work Zur Dogviatik. But Eothe, like an honest man, 
 produces his proofs from the utterances of the old dogmatists 
 themselves ; and even from his proofs, the utterances printed 
 for demonstration of his view of their meaning, it is clear that 
 his view of their meaning is mistaken. A skilled reader of 
 Eothe's footnotes will see that the " old dogmatists" whom he 
 quotes, so far from making it essential to their doctrine that 
 the man through whom God speaks shall pro tanto be un- 
 manned, really held that God employed man for the purpose 
 of expressing His mind through man, and therefore that man 
 was not destroyed — or unmanned— when God spoke His mind 
 through men. 
 
 Those who maintain the traditional doctrine which has been 
 stigmatised as mechanical are in the habit of sayiug that all 
 Scripture is the word of God, and that aU Scripture is the 
 word of man. That way of speaking makes perfectly clear 
 the fact that in their estimation the divine inspmation affirmed 
 by their doctrine implies no mechanism in the process. 
 This again shows that it is really dishonest, on the part of an 
 opponent of their doctrine, to speak as if mechanism had been 
 a confessed result of the inspiration it affirms. And that dis- 
 honesty is perpetrated by every intelligent theologian who 
 gives as the status quccstionis between him and the " old 
 dogmatists," whether mechanical inspiration is to be affirmed 
 of Holy Scripture ? 
 
 But, some may say, it is impossible that Scripture should at 
 once be the word of God and the word of man: if God have 
 
2o8 Nature of the Divme Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 really employed the penmen, so that the words of Scripture 
 are His, then the men must have in His hands become, not . 
 human pens, but non-human pens : in a word, the process 
 must have been mechanical if the Scripture have God for its 
 author, in your sense. Here we have a perilous advance, 
 downhiU. He who simply says. The word is not God's in your 
 sense, of being spoken or written by God, may mean only to 
 deny the reality here of the distinction between revelation and 
 inspiration, — i.e. to deny the reality of that inspiration which 
 makes God to be properly author of Scripture. But to say 
 that it is impossible for God to employ men as human pens, to 
 make them instruments in writing a word truly His, yet so 
 that the word is truly theirs, — this is in effect to set bounds 
 to the Omnipotence of God, while setting no bounds to the 
 presumption of men. 
 
 There is a sort of possession which cannot have place when 
 the man is left free to the exercise of his proper individuality. 
 Such possession seems appropriate to inspiration by heathen 
 deities. Though at least one heretical sect of Christians are 
 justly supposed to have maintained such possession as involved 
 in inspiration by the true God and Saviour, Pythonic inspira- 
 tion is a thing distinctively heathenish in conception. The 
 possession ascribed to demons in the New Testament, and the 
 experience ascribed there to poor tormented demoniacs, are 
 things distinct in their nature from the afflatus, and consequent 
 supersession of manhood, involved in the heathenish view of 
 inspiration : — thus far, that what the latter describes as the 
 normal and proper result of divine inspiration, the former 
 ascribes to an abnormal condition, in which man is possessed 
 by a malignant demon who is not God, but God's enemy and 
 man's. Still, the Pythonic inspiration of heathenism coincides 
 with the demoniacal possession of Scripture thus far, that in 
 both cases alike there is set forth a possession which causes 
 " depotentiation," repression of individuality, putting manhood 
 into abeyance. 
 
 I do not say that God may not conceivably have put man- 
 hood into abeyance through a divine possession in full keeping 
 with God's nature and man's. That there may be ecstasy of 
 this sort it would be extreme presumption to deny dogmati- 
 cally. But the ecstasy of the saint or prophet is not only of a 
 
Does possession imply depotentiation ? 209 
 
 species distinct from the non-human condition implied in 
 properly demoniacal possession, but is as different from that 
 possession as heaven is from hell. 
 
 We are thus led back to the proposition that God has em- 
 ployed men for the utterance of His mind through a word 
 which is properly God's. Is it possible for God to possess and 
 employ man so that the manhood is not destroyed ? 
 
 And in relation to this proposition we say that real posses- 
 sion may conceivably assume one of three modes or forms. 
 In one, the possession amounts only to that sort of interest, 
 perhaps enthusiastic interest, in the matter revealed, which 
 leaves the man's own personality and individuality not only 
 distinct but sole, so that the utterance is his own and only his 
 own ; as when Dante sings of hell and heaven, or Luther 
 teaches justification by faith, or Bunyan preaches " Grace 
 abounding to the chief of sinners." At another extreme, 
 represented by heathen oracles, the possession may be like that 
 of the demoniacs, in which the human instrument, perhaps 
 writhing and wrestling against the power possessing, is over- 
 come, neutralised, submerged ; so that the utterance is not 
 properly the man's own, but only an utterance through him 
 instrumentally, as if Lucan's witches had spoken through the 
 dead corpses of Pharsalia. But there is a third form of posses- 
 sion at least conceivable — a form specifically distinct both, 
 on the one hand, from that simply Pythonic inspiration 
 through which only " the god " speaks, and, on the other hand, 
 from that simply human inspiration through which only the 
 man speaks. And we say, to deny the possibility of a really 
 divine possession of this third sort, — such in effect that the 
 resulting utterance is at once God's and man's, — is to err by 
 presumption. 
 
 Christians are well acquainted with a case in which the 
 utterance is and must be at once completely human and truly 
 divine. I refer to the case of the person and the words of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. We may without irreverence speak of even 
 Christ's person as representing distinctively utterance : because 
 utterance, ^10709, The Word, is a proper name of Him as the 
 second person of the Godhead. But we now refer especially 
 to the divine-human constitution of His person as Immanuel. 
 Through that constitution of His person He is at once com- 
 
210 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 fti pletely ijik^wi) human and truly {aXrjOcos;) divine. I wish to 
 ' detain attention to this case of a Word which combines the 
 
 ©7 Te\e/a)9 (completely) with the aXr]9w<i (truly). 
 In view of that case, can Christians deny 
 
 the possibility of 
 a word which is at once completely human and truly divine ? 
 The words which Christ spoke in the days of His flesh, were 
 they not completely human ? And if in the case of Christ we 
 have not only a divine-human person, but divine-human 
 words, then how can Christians deny the possibility of a 
 divine-human word when the word in question happens to be 
 the written word ? 
 
 We come back to the statement that to deny the possibility 
 of God's speaking through man without destroying man's 
 individuality is to set bounds to the omnipotence of God. 
 As has already been intimated, the difficulty here consists in 
 our inability to see that man can be really employed by God, 
 or wielded as God's instrument without being destroyed. 
 More generally, we cannot comprehend how God in all history 
 can be the first cause without destroying the substantive 
 reality of second causes. But the difficulty here does not 
 warrant us in alleging impossibility. According to the 
 Christian doctrine of Providence, God, in a way incompre- 
 hensible to us, really is the first cause, doing according to 
 His will in all events of creature-history, and yet by the same 
 providence orders events to fall out according to the nature 
 of second causes. According to the evangelical doctrine of 
 salvation, it is God who, sovereignly, worketh in saints both 
 the willing and the doing ; while yet saints work out their 
 own salvation with fear and trembling. To make such 
 antinomies involve impossibility with God is to betray in- 
 caution, if not irreverence and presumption. 
 
 In this relation inquirers and dogmatisers are often seen under 
 the power of a fatal prepossession, which makes it practically 
 impossible for them so much as fairly to entertain the sugges- 
 tion, that a word whose inspiration is completely human may 
 at the same time be a word whose inspiration is truly divine. 
 We know that in many cases this fatal prepossession is only one 
 aspect of a view, of naturalism versus supernaturalism, which 
 carries men, professing to be devout students of Scripture, into 
 more or less complete rejection even of supernatural (divine) 
 
Sample of alleged inaccuracies. 2 1 1 
 
 revelation. Bat as we now have to do with the record, not 
 with the revelation recorded, I shall deal, through sample, 
 with the fatal prepossession only as blinding men beforehand 
 in relation to the subject of divine authorship of Scripture. 
 
 As a sample suitable for my present purpose, I will take the 
 well-known way of reasoning, in many cases, from the record 
 regarding the superscription on the cross. Of the four 
 recorded superscriptions no two coincide exactly in words. 
 Therefore, it has been reasoned, the old doctrine of divine 
 inspiration cannot be true ; God cannot have said, in all the 
 four cases, " This was the superscription." In some cases this 
 reasoning is founded on the supposition that, as the superscrip- 
 tions so vary in the records, in at least three of the records 
 there must be a "mistake" or "inaccuracy." So far the 
 reasoning is disposed of by the fact that no one of the records 
 professes to give tlie icords of the superscription, in Hebrew, 
 Greek, or Latin ; and also by the fact that it is the manner of 
 Scripture, even when assuming the form of vcrhatim reporting, 
 to be careless about .literal reproduction of the words of an 
 utterance — e.g., any lecturer on the Gospels is aware that, in 
 the ex facie verbatim reports of the words of the Lord Jesus, 
 the thing given is, often at least, only the substance of His 
 utterance. Thus, in the reports of His exposition of the 
 parable of the Sower one record has " the word," another " the 
 word of God," and another "the word of the kingdom." 
 This fact shows that where there is a variation in words, even 
 in reports ostensibly verbatim, there is not necessarily any 
 " mistake" or " inaccuracy," but only a conformity to the well- 
 known manner of Scripture, — a manner which, because well 
 known, itself provides against misconception. If I know 
 beforehand that, even when in form reporting verbatim, the 
 record must not be regarded as of course giving the exact 
 terras of the original utterance, then I need feel no uneasiness 
 when confronted with the variations of the recorded superscrip- 
 tions on the cross : I need only say to myself, all four agree 
 as to the thinrj superscribed, while every one gives it in his own 
 words ; as well may happen when four perfectly honest men 
 give a perfectly true account of one utterance.^ 
 
 ^ But does not tlie variation ia the ivords of the superscription show that 
 the inspiration is not verban AVlever question,. captious and misleading. 
 
212 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 So far we have had to do with the credibility of the record 
 rather than with the divinity of its authorship. The substantial 
 credibility is not affected in the estimation of brethren reason- 
 ing as above. But though it should not be so to their feeling, 
 it apparently is so in strict logic, so that their reasoning may 
 often be found as part of the stock-in-trade of vulgar infidelity. 
 I therefore deprecate the apparent facility, if not eagerness, 
 with which good Christian men are found harping on supposed 
 "mistakes" or "inaccuracies" in the record of revelation. 
 Even among Christian men there is sometimes observable 
 what might almost be described as a mania for such " in- 
 accuracies." Indeed, this must almost inevitably be the result 
 when men are passionately bent upon a theory of inspiration 
 which excludes the proper divinity of the record. And the 
 stupidity — as I will venture to call it — of imagining that there 
 must, of course, be inaccuracy in the records of the superscrip- 
 tion on the cross, because the recorded words of the super- 
 scription are in no two of the four cases the same, may serve 
 to warn prudent men against the cry of " mistake " or 
 " inaccuracy " on account of ostensible verbal discrepancy. 
 There is much of warning, as well as of consolation, in the 
 utterance, " Forgive them ; they know not what they do." 
 As of men's treatment of the Incarnate Word of God, so it 
 may be of good men's treatment of His written word. Let 
 them, at least, make sure that they know what they are 
 doing, when they lend themselves to parading " mistakes " and 
 " inaccuracies." 
 
 But some, owning the fact that the variation in the words 
 of the superscription on the cross does not imply mistake or 
 inaccuracy on the part of the human authors of the Gospels, 
 
 Does any one think that Pilate was divinely inspired ? The question here 
 is, whether four distinct descriptions of the sujierscription, which, ex facie, 
 are given by four men, may not have (through them) been given by one 
 God ? In other words, may He not employ four men, i.e. make use of 
 their fourfokl idiosyncrasies, to convey His one meaning with a fourfold 
 colouring? But why more than one colouring? Because God chooses to 
 speak through more than one man. The fourfoldness of the colouring, 
 with agreement in substance, is what might have been expected from real 
 emjdoyment of men as " pens of God." It serves a secondary purpose in 
 showing that the men are indejiendent witnesses. And as their testimonies 
 reveal no real discrepancy, it is fully consistent with the suggestion that they 
 all alike, in producing their respective records, are instruments of God in 
 producing His fourfold record. 
 
Variations in expression — Unity of author sJiip. 213 
 
 are of opinion that the variation shows that, in the strict sense 
 of the " old dogmatists," the authorship of the fourfold record 
 cannot be divine. They may admit that God had to do with 
 the preparation of the record, as He has to do with the 
 determination of men's utterances in the ordinary course of 
 providence, or in the course of His gracious work of regenera- 
 tion and sauctification, so that the records are indirectly 
 divine, as the best words of uninspired saints are indirectly 
 divine ; i.e. so that we really get from them what they have 
 received from the Lord. But the present question is, whether 
 through them we really get/?'or;i Him what they have received 
 from Him. And here some Christian brethren say in effect : 
 " No, it is impossible, for the record is fourfold, even in 
 terms, while God is one. If God had really, in the sense now 
 in question, been the author of the records, they would not 
 have been fourfold, but one, even in terms." Here I am 
 endeavouring to give exactly what passes through the mind of 
 the brethren referred to. And I say that it betrays the blind- 
 ing influence of that fatal prepossession of which I have spoken. 
 The brethren are prepossessed with the opinion that it is 
 impossible for God to speak through men without overriding 
 and placing in abeyance individuality, personality, manhood. 
 
 Try to suppose, for argument's sake, that God, speaking 
 through man, emfloys him, and so does not destroy him. Then 
 what have we to expect as the result ? We have to expect, setting 
 apart possibilities of error which exist in fallen men when God 
 is not preventing, that four witnesses, all speaking perfect 
 truth, shall speak the perfect truth in four different ways, if 
 only those four ways be what would naturally result from their 
 varied characters, idiosyncrasies, individualities. This, I say, 
 is what we have to expect, on the supposition that God really 
 emploTjs men as the organs of His utterance ; so that, for 
 instance, if it be natural for four men to give four distinct 
 reports of the superscription on the cross, distinct in terms, 
 though the same in substance, then that same variety of form 
 in four God-inspired accounts ought not to startle us, as in- 
 compatible with divinity of inspiration; but ought rather 
 to be regarded by us as in the line of what might have been 
 expected when the inspired record comes through four men. 
 
 " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Gene- 
 
214 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 rally, as it has pleased God to give the record through men, we 
 of course expect that the word shall be human in form. And 
 as it has pleased Him to give it through this, and that, and 
 that other man,- we ought of course to expect that in form it 
 shall exhibit the idiosyncrasies — apart from sin — of the in- 
 dividual men through whom it comes. If they be pens of God, 
 they are human pens. And, it is to be presumed. He has 
 selected this and that man, not with a view to suppress in- 
 dividualities, but precisely because the individuality, in the 
 case of this and that man chosen for the purpose, is precisely 
 fitted, through operative manifestation of it, to be the organ of 
 expressing what God means to say. 
 
 I may add that the understood purpose of God, to employ 
 individualities freely and fully manifested, would well accord 
 with the manifest manner of the inspired writers, in giving 
 free and full expression to their individualities. They write 
 as if they had no consciousness of Divine inspiration. And it is 
 conceivable that, in the detailed articulation of their labour as 
 scribes of God, they have no consciousness of Divine inspira- 
 tion. But without the consciousness of that inspiration, they may 
 liave had full confidence in its presence and power; as when 
 the martyrs of the first age were confident that there would " be 
 given to them " what they should say, and thus felt no need of 
 anxious preparation of speeches, but simply gave spontaneous 
 utterance to wliat occurred to them when the testing time 
 came on. So tlie manifest freeness, spontaneousness, cihemdon, 
 of inspired writers, so far from militating against the supposi- 
 tion of the divine inspiration of their utterances, may rather 
 fall to be regarded as resulting from their perfect confidence 
 in the presence and power of the inspiration. 
 
 So far by way of definition. And this, very nearly, is the 
 end of the journey which I had proposed to myself on this 
 occasion. But my paper would be unwarrantably fragmentary 
 if I did not make some remarks on the question, "What then ? 
 What is the use of your definition ? What are we to think of 
 the view of inspiration thus defined ? My answer is, It is the 
 only view that will work, that will satisfy the existing con- 
 ditions, supposing Christianity to be a new creation, and the 
 Bible to be in some real sense a trustworthy record of a 
 
Notes on Evidence for the Catholic doctrine. 215 
 
 Divine revelation. But in justification of this answer, I make 
 a few very elliptical notes in conclusion, 
 
 (1.) To all appearance the revelation bids us regard the record 
 as divine, the Book as properly oracular, the Bible as God's 
 word in the sense of being a Scripture of which God is author. 
 I will not now go into detailed evidence. I state as clear to 
 my apprehension, after full inquiry, that the proper divinity of 
 the authorship of Scripture is really declared in the revelation 
 which the Scriptures record. Of this I have no doubt. And 
 I do not think that any man will have any doubt of it who 
 goes through the process of carefully and candidly considering 
 the teachings of revelation regarding the record. 
 
 (2.) Scripture as a whole has certain marhs of divinity of 
 authorship. The marks may not be visible in this or that 
 portion of Scripture, and may thus fall out of view of those 
 whose career of inquiry is one of disintegration without 
 redintegration. But if they be in the Bible as a whole, then 
 the divinity without the marks will be believed in, and so the 
 marks themselves may come to be seen and felt, in those 
 portions, — e.g. The Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, and 
 Esther — in which the marks do not appear at first sight. 
 Now, that the Scripture as a whole has those marks can, I 
 think, be shown not only from its pretensions but from 
 its achievements. In particular, it claims to be, and it has 
 proved itself to be, (1) a word o{ faith, and (2) a word of life ; 
 in a sense and measure which imply nothing less than divinity 
 of authorship. I could give very copious illustrations here. 
 But I will only propose to brethren the exercise of consider- 
 ing, Has not the Bible caused men to hclicve in God, and to 
 live by faith, in a sense and measure altogether unexampled on 
 the part of books of simply human inspiration ? The question 
 at first sight will seem precarious. But I am certain that the 
 longer you think of it, gathering in your experiences and 
 readings, the more you shall feel disposed to say. This Book is 
 shown to be divine by being distinctively creative ; it alone, 
 of all books, deserves the description, " The dead shall hear the 
 voice of the Son of God ; and hearing, shall live." 
 
 (3.) There has on the Church's part been an intuitive sense 
 of the divinity of Scripture, not only in respect of contents 
 but in respect of form. This intuitive sense of a divinity 
 
2 16 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 iuherent in the word is an effective testimonium SpiritlXs 
 Saiicti. And the argument from it, though capable of abuse, 
 has a right use, the use I now am making, viz., to corroborate 
 the arguments drawn from the testimony of the revelation, and 
 from certain manifest characters of the record. Apart from 
 all such more external evidences, there is a self-evidence in 
 the voice, or word, which is an object of intuitive knowledge 
 to him who knows the person, and which may even make one 
 to know him to whom the person was previously unknown — 
 as a traveller in Africa may at once divine the lion's roar, 
 previously never heard by him. At least, a child will know a 
 father's voice. And it is simply a fact that Christians have 
 an immediate feeling or conviction of the divinity of Scripture. 
 It is upon this, subjectively, that the faith of Christendom 
 reposes. There is a properly religious reverence for Scripture, 
 distinct in kind from the veneration we owe to the best works 
 of simply human authorship, even when the contents of those 
 works are recognised as originally derived from revelation of 
 God. Hence, for instance, Wilberforce and Andrew Fuller 
 speak of that religious reverence for Scripture as one of the 
 fruits and evidences of vital godliness, and the absence of it as 
 an evidence of ungodliness of heart. Indeed, we may go further, 
 and affirm that the Bible, wherever it is read in communities, 
 goes on making way for itself, gaining the ground on which it 
 stands, winning credit to itself, not only as recording a one 
 divine revelation, but as being a veritably divine record of that 
 revelation, not only containing but being " the Word of God." 
 What, then, do you make of the " mistakes" or " inaccuracies" 
 of Scripture ? I am willing to assume the position of one who 
 confessedly does not know what to make of them, where they 
 are manifestly real. In our day, difficulties of this class are 
 paraded and pressed, with manifest relish and gusto, as if some 
 professing Christian teachers had really felt an interest in 
 giving to their existence an emphasis even of exaggeration. 
 And it appears to be assumed that their existence is a dis- 
 covery of our new time, involving a necessity of departing 
 from the old doctrine of inspiration. In fact, there is no new 
 discovery here. The particular cases of alleged " mistake " 
 or "inaccuracy" may vary; but the existence of cases of 
 this class has been full before the mind of the Church for 
 
Regarding history and logic of the question. 2 1 7 
 
 many generations. Two hiuidred years ago, a collection of 
 them, borrowed by Clericiis frdm Spinoza, occasioned a flutter 
 among theologians, and certain weak evasions, about "partial 
 inspiration," etc., especially among weak-kneed evangelicals 
 in Britain. More than a thousand years before that they had 
 been dwelt upon, and pressed to an alien conclusion, by 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia ; so that some of his lucubrations, e.g. 
 about the Pentateuch, look as if they had but yesterday 
 reached us by telegraph from Tubingen or Leyden. But the 
 Christian Church, in view of this class of phenomena, and of 
 the conclusions to which she was invited on the ground of them, 
 has not accepted the conclusion, nor allowed the phenomena 
 to disturb her confidence in the proper divinity of the Scrip- 
 ture. And in my judgment the Church has been right and 
 the alarmists have been wrong. The phenomena of this sort 
 do not necessitate, and therefore do not warrant, abandonment 
 of the belief that Scripture is the word of God, and con- 
 sequently rejection of the relative evidence furnished by the 
 testimony of revelation, the manifest characters of Scripture as 
 a word of faith and of life, and the intuitive feeling or j)erception 
 of its divinity on the part of devout men. 
 
 I think it right to put this class of difficulties into the 
 background, on account of a very prevalent method of push- 
 ing them into the foreground, and practically ignoring the 
 positive evidence appropriate here. You say to a friend, 
 " You appear to me to exclude from your doctrine the proper 
 divinity of the record." Instead of answering straight, he will 
 say,' " But what do you make of the inaccuracies of Scripture ? 
 You will perhaps say that they do not exist, or that their 
 existence is owing to errors of transcription." In such a case 
 I think the proper answer is, "No, I do not say anything 
 about them. At this stage I think it best to say nothing 
 about them, I wiU begin with saying, that the proper 
 divinity of Scripture is shown by positive evidence, of revela- 
 tion and of experience. And then, if you choose, I may 
 say, as to the phenomena described as 'inaccuracies,' I am 
 perplexed by them, and I do not know what to do with them, 
 cxceioting that I ought to prevent them from shaking my belief 
 founded on that positive evidence." And this I wiU have 
 a good right to say. For, I maintain, the phenomena are not 
 ■ VOL. XXIX. — NO. cxii. p 
 
2 1 8 Nature of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 such in their nature as to warrant by necessitating the aban- 
 donment of belief really founded on that positive evidence. 
 This, I think, I could show by detailed examination of those 
 alleged " inaccuracies," especially in respect of logical bearing 
 on the question of inspiration. But then that would lead us 
 away into tangled talk which would cause the positive evidence 
 to disappear from the mind's view, and thus disqualify us for 
 judgment in the case, leaving us under a vague impression, 
 under whose power many are at this hour enslaved and 
 blinded, that those alleged " inaccuracies " are a main source, 
 if not the main source, of information regarding the nature 
 of theopncustia. 
 
 Epilogue. 
 
 (The capital letters here, A, B, etc., represent only vleios, not persons.) 
 
 A. "You make an illegitimate distinction between human 
 inspiration and divine inspiration." Ans. I do make a distinc- 
 tion, as when one distinguishes between Homeric and -iEschylean 
 authorship of a book. And I see that the word " inspiration " 
 has so much come to mean " inspiration of God" that I should 
 prefer in popular discourse to employ the word "inspira- 
 tion " only when I mean {theopneustia) divine inspiration. 
 But for some scientific purposes it may be convenient to speak 
 of " inspiration " as equivalent to autliorshi]). In such cases 1 
 would feel no difficulty in employing the expression, " human 
 inspiration," in speaking, say, of the "Westminster Catechism. 
 
 B. " I hold with you that the Bible is a properly oracular book ; 
 and that all Scripture is the Word of God, a proper ground 
 of faith. But, while maintaining this as the proper ground of 
 my Christian faith and life, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact 
 of ostensible ' mistakes,' which I cannot account for consistently 
 with the doctrine of divine inspiration," Ans. I am so far in 
 your position. I see ostensible " mistakes " which I cannot 
 account for. And, if you sincerely regard Scripture as a 
 divine record, or the Bible as an oracular book, I suppose that 
 you and I must at bottom be of one mind and one heart. 
 Only I hope that you agree with me in holding the oracular- 
 ness of Scripture as the fundamental fact of religion in this 
 relation. You know that some, while professing to accept 
 Scripture as an oracle, though presenting on the face of it 
 
Epilogue. 2 1 9 
 
 ostensible "mistakes," found upon those ostensible mistakes 
 their doctrine of the authorship of Scripture, so that the Scrip- 
 ture comes to be not a proper ground of faith. 
 
 C. " You after all have not told us where is the inspiration, 
 and what it is." Ans. I have told you, first, as to the where 
 of inspiration, that it is in the Scripture ; and, second, as to 
 the what, that it consists in the Bible being QocVs Word. 
 Very clever people may here be really " blinded by excess of 
 light" — from earth. Simple people have always known what is 
 meant by an oracular book, a word which is God's, a scripture 
 whose meaning is God's mind expressed by God. 
 
 D. " My view is this : — The inspiration resides in the moral 
 and spiritual ideas of Scripture, not in its intimations about 
 physical fact." Ans. That is an old Jesuitical view, ventilated 
 for the purpose of obliterating the distinction between a divine 
 record and a human record. And it is thoroughly unscriptural. 
 The Bible, when speaking or hinting about its own divinity of 
 authorship, nowhere distinguishes between moral ideas and 
 physical facts. Whatever it appears to claim for itself, in 
 respect of divinity of authorship, it appears to claim for itself 
 alike all through. Christ and His apostles, when referring to 
 the Old Testament Scripture, never said. You may believe this 
 scripture statement, for it does not refer to physical facts. 
 
 E. "But is there not a real distinction between spiritual 
 ideas and physical facts ?" Ans. Yes, the Jesuits knew that. 
 But the distinction is not relevant here. For here the question 
 is not about the importance of the thing spoken of, but about 
 the truth, credibility, divinity of the Speaker, There are no 
 Bible statements about physical fact that are even ostensibly 
 untrue. The Bible statements about physical facts have never 
 been the real occasion of infidelity. The real occasions have 
 been the spiritual ideas of Scripture. So said Christ, " If I 
 tell you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe 
 if I tell you heavenly things ?" ^ 
 
 James MacGregok. 
 
220 Strictures on the Article * Bible' 
 
 Art. II. — Strictures on the Article " Bible," in the recent edition 
 of the " EncyclojJcedia Britannica. 
 
 p ENEEALISATION upon the basis of questionable or 
 ^ imperfect data is one of the most fertile sources of error 
 in the fields of Science and Philosophy. The author of this 
 article has caught this spirit of the age, and has carried it into 
 the department of Biblical Criticism. The first manifestation of 
 its influence is seen in the opening of the second paragraph : — 
 "The pre-Christian age of the Biblical religion falls into a 
 period of religious productivity, and a subsequent period of 
 stagnation and merely conservative traditions." This gene- 
 ralisation, besides being entirely too sweeping, proceeds upon 
 a false assumption regarding the relation between religion and 
 revelation, making piety the basis and condition of revelation, 
 and thus, in accordance with one of the rationalistic schools, 
 assuming that the religious consciousness is the source of 
 theology. So far is this representation from being in harmony 
 with the fact, the reverse relation is the one taught in the 
 Bible. Both under the Old Testament and the New, religion 
 was originated and maintained by supernatural interpositions 
 occurring at sundry times and in divers manners. The ]|how- 
 ledge communicated was not the offspring of the religion, but 
 the religion was the offspring of the knowledge. The order has 
 ever been, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word 
 of God. It was just as true of Isaiah as it was of Balaam, that 
 it was not by reading the record of his religious consciousness 
 that he discovered the glories of the coming Messiah. 
 
 Nor was the Biblical religion left to depend upon one 
 impulse which operated during a period of productivity, and 
 then vanished away, leaving the Church to spiritual stagnation 
 and conservative traditions. The diverse estates of action and 
 stagnation have alternated throughout the history of the 
 Church, divine communications always preceding religious 
 revival. This fact forbids the generalisation with which Pro- 
 fessor Smith has opened the discussion. The Biblical religion, 
 so far as the Old Testament is concerned, cannot be classified 
 under the two heads specified in this article. A glance at the 
 history as given in the Bible itself is sufiicient to justify this 
 
s 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 V. 
 
 v 
 
 \ 
 
 N 
 
:AMPHIET BINDER 
 
 ^3 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 mfSi 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 .fC^mm. 
 
 tmrnn^-. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
BS480.IVI148 
 
 Nature of the divine inspiration of 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library