De Principiis, Book IV.15
God and Man
What is the main reason we are concerned about the Bible and its inspiration?
Generally, the answer to that question is simple. We want to know about God and his will for us. How much we're willing to get involved with God is another question. For many of us, just having a guide to making good ethical decisions is sufficient. Others would like a detailed road map for all of life's decisions. In either case, Bible students are generally asking what God's will is in their life.
It's very easy to discuss the Bible for years and even write about it, without answering this very basic question. Some people are satisfied with just the affirmation. “You can trust the Bible,” says the pastor from the pulpit, and that's all they need. Almost as often, they don't really look very much at that Bible they trust to find out just what it says, how it says it, and how they are supposed to figure out what it means to them.
Let's think about inspiration in practical terms for a little bit. By “thinking in practical terms” I mean the way in which we use our understanding of inspiration when we apply what we learn from inspired writings.
We talk about inspiration in an extremely God-centered (source centered) way. Now being God-centered is not a bad thing, but in this case it can be misleading. I would suggest that while our theories of inspiration center around God and what he can and does do, our processes and principles of interpretation generally center around us as human beings and what we can do. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the amount of effort that must go into understanding any message, especially the message of scripture. It's also clear that interpretation is done by people, and thus they would be the focus when we talk about that activity..
The most important question is this: If we do not get the right message, where is it that the information is lost? Our wildly different interpretations of the Bible mean that somewhere some folks, likely very many, are not getting the right message. There are a number of places that the information could be lost. It could be that the prophet did not accurately hear the message. Perhaps a scribe copied it incorrectly, or a translator chose the wrong words. Finally, an interpreter might have simply misapplied God's words and produced something harmful or even very slightly in error.
No matter how accurately we believe God gave the message, in practical terms we are much more interested in how accurately we can understand it. Let’s say that 2% of the message of the New Testament is lost by copyists. By that I mean that 2% of the text of the New Testament is not what the authors originally wrote. I think that number is fairly high, because that is closer to the percentage of the text that is in dispute, and not all text in dispute is likely to be wrong. But even if that is the case, I suspect that if we compare interpretations, we will see that a much higher percentage must be lost by somebody in the process of interpretation.
I think this difficulty extends to the great divide between types of revelation, even the big one between general and special revelation. We cannot be satisfied simply to ask what information each type of revelation can provide. We must also ask how accurately we can comprehend it.
Thus the question is not only the accuracy of the content, but rather in what is to be conveyed, and how well we are capable of understanding it. I would presume God would write his character quite perfectly in nature, and yet that may be the hardest message to interpret. Some people prefer the immediate revelation of modern prophets or of dreams and visions. I too believe that God is as capable of speaking today as ever, and as likely to do so, but in that case we have the additional burden of deciding on the authenticity of the message, and we still need to interpret what we hear, especially if it is a vision or dream. Even a verbal message must be verified as to accuracy and then applied correctly.
This is one of the reasons I believe that the doctrine of inerrancy , an evangelical standard today, is not only wrong, it is inadequate. It deals only with the source. It seems to be a way of guarding the barn door after the cattle have departed. Interpretation has gone in a thousand directions while some are arguing that the message was absolutely correct at the starting point. In addition, somehow it’s OK for us to lose part of the source in the process of copying–something acknowledged when inerrancy is postulated solely of the conveniently missing autographs–and yet if one supposes that instead something got altered on the way from God to the prophet, all revelation must immediately become suspect.
Revelation is of value when I comprehend and apply it, and assertions of its validity apart from adding the line “and you can understand it” are pointless. I think that is part of the reason why there is wisdom literature in the Bible. It’s God’s message, but you have to think about it and comprehend it. Who you are, and how you have exercised your mind will make a difference in what you will understand. Revelation is not a replacement for reason, nor in appropriate areas is reason independent of revelation.
No matter whether you are listening to a new idea, a message someone claims to have received directly from God, or the interpretation of a passage of scripture, your individual mind, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is the final filter to separate sense from nonsense. The last person, and the decisive person, to hear from God is you. Even the firmest believer in the detailed accuracy of the text of scripture will realize that many interpretations of that scripture are nonsense.
The Human Factor
Before we try to tie this together, let's look a bit more at the human factor. This is the other end of the telephone cord. Inspiration is not just about God. It is about how God communicates with human beings. Thus it is not just about God's perfection; it is also about humanity's imperfection. It is not just about God's infinite perspective; it is also about humanity's finite capacity to understand.
The human mind is probably the most neglected part of God's creation. It is a wonderful element, one that has provoked some of the most profound philosophical and scientific writing. No, I don’t mean merely that people think with their minds and then write philosophy and science. I’m referring to writing about how the mind evolved, how it functions, what consciousness actually is, and why the mind malfunctions from time to time. Those are all interesting topics.
My topic, however, is how Christians can choose to honor God with their minds, and why they should. (In this book I’m addressing Christians because that’s my own faith group, not to imply that other people cannot honor God with their minds.) Sometimes it seems that every element of our faith is used against the human mind instead of in cooperation with it.
1 Our saving faith is sometimes seen as a termination of our ethical decision making
2 Dependence on God is often seen as dependence on him solely in a supernatural sense, what God can do for you miraculously, but not in the natural sense, what God has made possible through the creation
3 The inspiration of the scriptures is seen as bypassing the people involved, whether, prophets, secretaries, redactors, copyists, or readers
4 The church offices, especially those of teacher and prophet, are seen as bypassing good thinking when people are expected to obey merely because of the office
5 Laziness replaces the hard work of good thinking, as when we accept something just because we saw it in a book, and it was written by someone holy
6 An appearance of piety can replace wisdom. When someone announces–”God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind.
Thus it is not merely in dealing with inspiration that the human factor, and particularly the factor of the human mind tends
