This is the second of a three part series on "The Human Writers of the Scriptures" by E J Young.
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The question may very well be raised how the Spirit actually controlled the writers of Scripture so that they wrote expressly what He desired and yet at the same time were responsible individuals whose personalities were not stifled. How, for example, could the prophet write, “The words of Amos . . . which he saw?” Does not this verse contain a glaring contradiction? If the words are truly those of Amos, how could they at the same time be those which had found their origin in God? If God was the Author, how could Amos also be regarded as an author?
Legitimate as such questions are, however, they cannot be fully answered. God has not seen fit to reveal to us the mode by which He communicated His Word to His servants, placing that word in their mouths and “carrying” them until the Word was accurately committed to writing. We have come, in other words, into an area of mystery. There is much about this precious Scriptural doctrine which God has not revealed. The Scripture is silent as to the mode which God employed to preserve His Word from error. In this as in so many doctrines of the Bible there is mystery. It is of course, to be expected that such would be the case. We are but men and our understanding is at best limited and finite. We can only know as a created being knows. God, on the other hand, is the One who in His understanding is infinite. We cannot probe into His dealings in such a way as to obtain full and comprehensive knowledge thereof. He is not such a One as can be brought down and placed under the scrutiny of the microscope of the human mind.
In the doctrine of the Trinity likewise there is mystery. He who thinks that he can remove that mystery and fully understand the doctrine deceives no one but himself. This deep truth must be received in faith, and the believing heart rejoices simply because God has revealed this mystery in His Word. How wondrous is this revelation which God has given of Himself! How great, we are compelled to say, is our Holy God! When the mind delights itself in the thought that He is the one living and true God, it finds itself suddenly brought face to face with the fact that He is also Triune. Likewise, when it contemplates the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is worshipping Him beside whom there is no other. The One reminds us of the Three, and the Three bring us to the One. Before Him, the one God in three Persons, we bow in adoration. We praise Him, we worship Him, we extol His matchless Name, we meditate upon His infinite attributes and perfections. Never, however, can we remove the mystery that adheres to the revelation which He has given of Himself as Triune.
It is the same with the doctrine of inspiration. When we have set forth all that the Scripture has to say, we can go no further. It may well be that questions arise in our minds, but they are questions which, at present at least, we cannot answer. Our duty is to believe all that God has revealed and to bow in humble acceptance of the truth which He has given. Scripture has spoken; it has permitted us to learn much concerning its inspiration. It has not, however, told us all. We may then freely acknowledge that there are difficulties in the Scriptural position, and also that there are questions which we cannot at present answer. Our portion is to be believers. God has spoken. Let us hear His voice, and beyond that let us not seek to go.
At this point, however, it is necessary to consider in some detail and with some care an objection to the above teaching which is frequently being voiced in our day. When the Word of God came through human personality, it is very often maintained, the Word was obscured to some extent. God was limited in His choice of available instruments through whom His Word might come to us, and therefore He did the best that He could with the personalities and means that were at His disposal. Consequently, the character of the revelation which we have depends not only upon God but also upon the human media through which it came.
Since the Word did come through human agents and instrumentality, it is claimed, there must adhere to it some of the error and imperfection which is found in everything human. It is just like plunging one’s arm into muddy water: in withdrawing the arm some of the mud will adhere to it; or it is like rays of sunlight which are less bright when shining through a dirty window than a clear one.
The character of the Divine revelation, therefore, according to this view, depends not only on God, but also on those media through which that revelation came. If those media were fallible, then the revelation itself partook of that fallibility. God Himself was limited by the means at hand. He could communicate Himself and His truth to men only in so far as men themselves were spiritually mature to receive His revelation. Men with spiritual failings could mar and prevent that revelation from coming to mankind.
Those, who insist that the Word of God in coming through human instruments has itself been affected and has acquired imperfections, for the most part believe that they can themselves detect these imperfections. Generally they wish to limit the errors and flaws which have supposedly crept into the Word of God to minor matters of fact or history. Sometimes a comparison is made with the incarnation of the Lord. The Word which became incarnate was subject to all the limitations and hardships of human life, it is sometimes maintained, and likewise the embodiment of the spoken Word of God in the history of a people such as the Hebrews involved all the crudities and the errors that such a people would probably make.
One need not look far today for a statement of this position. It is to be found in much that is written on the subject. Whenever someone writes on the Bible, he seems to feel the necessity of pointing out that it contains errors, and that these errors are a result of the human agents who were employed in the writing down of Scripture. It seems to be taken for granted that error must in the nature of the case be found in whatever is written by human hands.
As we hear this objection to the Scriptural teaching, there are several questions which arise. In the first place, we would ask, What kind of a God is He who cannot reveal to the world a message that is free from error? Surely, He must be limited and restricted indeed! Those of us who from time to time engage in a bit of writing are happy to have a stenographer who types our work accurately. If we discover that the stenographer is constantly making mistakes in her typing, and these mistakes are of so serious a nature that our work is actually obscured and marred thereby, we shall probably change stenographers. God, however, if the position which we are now considering is correct, cannot even do this. God is far more limited than are we mortals. We have the ability of hiring someone who will do our work for us as we desire it done; God, on the other hand, cannot even do that. When God would speak to mankind in writing, He cannot get His message across without having it cluttered up with irritating errors.
It is well to consider this question carefully. God, we are being told, had to use the means at His disposal. Those means were human beings. Therefore, when God revealed His Word, that Word, in passing through the media of human writers, acquired the characteristics of those writers, including their error, their ignorance, their crudities. Well may we exclaim at the poverty and weakness of such a God! If indeed man can thus thwart Him, it is pertinent to ask, Is He really worth knowing after all?
One thing, however, is clear. Such a God, limited as He is by the human agents through whom He gives His Word, is not the God of the Bible. He may very well serve as the god of modern theology, but he is not the Creator of heaven and earth, the one true eternal God. If it were really true — and thank God that it is not — that the Father in heaven were restricted in His power by man and were limited in His ability to reveal His Word, we could then be sure that at the best he was only a finite being like ourselves. He might be more powerful than we, yet, since we can clutter up His revelation with our error, even that assumption is questionable. Since He is limited by His creatures, such a God is no God at all.
Very different is the God of whom Scripture speaks. This God, whom the Christian worships as the Creator, is One who doeth according to His will, “and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” (Daniel 4:35b). This God, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, is One who can take up and bear `the writers of Scripture so that what they have written is exactly what He desired to have written. He is One who in His infinite power can use as His agents and instruments fallible human beings, who can bring into His employ all the gifts, talents, and characteristics of those human beings, and yet can cause them to pen His own Word, and keep that Word utterly separate and distinct from their own sinful nature and the consequent imperfections which are the result of that nature.
There is, however, another point which must be raised in this connection. Those who believe that there are errors in the Bible, as we have seen, seek to account for the presence of these supposed errors upon the assumption that their origin is to be attributed to the human writers. Since human authors are fallible, they reason, the Scripture itself must therefore partake of fallibility. If this is actually the case, it follows that not merely part of Scripture partakes of fallibility, but all. Whatever is the Word of God has passed through human instruments. Whatever passes through human instruments, so this argument runs, must therefore partake of fallibility. All Scripture has passed through human instrumentality; consequently, all Scripture has become fallible. There is no escape from this position. It will not do to say that fallibility has attached itself only to statements of historical and geographical fact. To do that would be to be guilty of gross inconsistency. Like a leach that cannot be removed, human fallibility attaches itself to all Scripture without exception. Whatever is the Word of God is also fallible; no part is free from error and imperfection.
It may very well be that this is not what modern writers believe but, be that as it may, it is the logical conclusion of their position, and it is well to note what that conclusion is. God grant that those who are so insistent that humanity must give to the Divine Word the character of fallibility would realize what is involved in their claim. They have not solved any difficulties; rather they have created incalculably difficult questions and problems.
An example will reveal how dire are the consequences of this position. When we are called to a home where death has come, how inadequate we are. At such a time how trite and unsatisfactory are mere words of ours! How the heart grieves at the thoughtlessness and cruelty of those who have nothing more to offer than mere banality and platitude. Cold and unthinking they are indeed! Can we on the other hand, offer anything of greater comfort? We turn to the pages of the Bible and read, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (John 11:25,26). “Is that true?” asks the one in sorrow. “Is Jesus really the One who has taken my loved one to be with Him?” “Well,” we reply, “we believe that it is true. Of course, this Word of God, like everything else in the Bible is tinged with fallibility. Like the remainder of Scripture it also has imperfection and error.”
To speak in that vein would be mockery. It would offer no comfort to the soul who is in sorrow. Yet, how else could one answer? To the one in need there would be nothing better to say, since all Scripture is fallible. We could never be sure as to what it said about God, nor could we, for that matter, have any assurance that its prescriptions for our conduct upon this earth were free from error. Serious and tragic in the extreme are the consequences of adopting this modern error. We can only be thankful that its adherents are themselves inconsistent in their practice. For our part, we want nothing to do with a position which logically can lead to such results. Thank God that when it came through human agents His blessed Word was not coated with fallibility. Those agents did not control or circumscribe Him; they did not affect His Word, but rather, under His sovereign Spirit, were rendered the willing instruments to carry out what He wished accomplished.
Furthermore, if fallible human writers have given to us a Bible that is fallible, how are we ourselves, who most certainly are fallible, to detect in the Bible what is error and what is not? To this the answer is given that with the increase in knowledge, we can easily detect errors which the ancient writers made. They had crude ideas of geography and history, it is said, but we today have much greater knowledge. Where they went astray, we can furnish a check and correct their errors. To speak this way, however, is not to settle the issue at all. What about those parts of the Bible upon which we cannot check? How are we to discern what in those parts is error and what is not? How are we to separate the fallible from the inerrant?
To take an example, the Bible speaks of Palestine and Jerusalem. We may today travel to Palestine and Jerusalem, and thus we have a check. When the Bible mentioned these places, it was telling us the truth; such places do exist. The Bible also mentions certain customs of antiquity. Abraham, for example, took his concubine, Hagar, and from her a son was born. Archaeology has made it perfectly clear that this custom was as a matter of fact practiced in Abraham’s day. Well and good, but what about those parts of the Bible upon which we cannot check? How shall we evaluate the God of Scripture? How do we know whether we can separate the wheat from the chaff in the Biblical teaching about God? The answer is that we simply cannot do so. If all Scripture is fallible, then all that Scripture says about God is fallible, and we have no way of detecting what is and what is not in accord with fact. We ourselves are likely to err. How then can we judge the Scripture? Judge the Scripture we cannot; we are left in a hopeless scepticism. It will not do to say that modern knowledge has made it possible to separate the wheat and the chaff in the Bible. It has done nothing of the kind. We are ourselves like the authors of Scripture and the only thing that can help us in an infallible Word from God. Since, however, God cannot give us an infallible Word, there is nothing that we can do. Here is the Bible, shot full of error, and we must make the best of it. Disastrous indeed is this conclusion. Disastrous as it is, however, it is the end at which we are bound to arrive if we adopt the view which we are now seeking to answer.
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