I believe the King James Version is inspired by God.

But don’t worry. I’m not a “KJV Only” lunatic (Sorry, There is no other word for it).

You see, along with the KJV, I also believe the NIV is inspired.

Oh, and also the NKJV, the NAS, the ESV, the NRSV, the NET, the NLT, and most of the other translations out there, including non-English translations. There might be some translations that are not inspired, but I haven’t found one yet.

In fact, I believe that these translations are more inspired than are the original manuscripts penned by Moses, Matthew, John, Paul, and any other Biblical author. (Be careful with what you think I’m saying…my present tense verb choice is very important.)

Are you scared yet?

[Read more…]

The “Me” from ten years ago would not have agreed with the “Me” from today about the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture.

So I decided to debate myself.

The Old Me from about ten years ago argues for the traditional view of inspiration, and the New Me, who is still trying to figure lots of things out, argues for… well, he’s not really arguing for a view at all. He’s just trying to make sense of the old view, which, the more he thinks about it, makes less and less sense.

Here is the discussion:

Old Me: I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

New Me: That is a great thing to believe. Why do you believe it?

Old Me: Because 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21 say so.

New Me: Well, even if these verses say what you claim (and I’m not convinced they do), a book is not inspired just because it claims to be. Other “holy books” of other religions claim to be inspired. Do you believe these other claims as well?

Old Me: No, those other books are not inspired. We know the Bible is because it has proven itself to be historically accurate time and time again, while those other books have not. Also, the Bible has fulfilled prophecy, while those other books do not.

[Read more…]

One of the consequences to the traditional doctrine of inspiration (and inerrancy, but we’ll get to that later), is that it has reduced the Bible to a cookbook where every ingredient has to be exactly measured or the cake turns out wrong. If every word and individual letter is exactly as God wanted it to be, then there must be a reason for such exactness, and therefore, to truly study the Bible, we must drill down to get at the meaning of every individual letter and word.

In other words, the doctrine of inspiration has created numerous scholarly arguments about spelling and grammar in the biblical text.

Personally, I love this sort of stuff, and have engaged in some of it myself in this very series. But I sometimes wonder what Jesus would say about it. On the one hand, He does talk about the importance of individual words (Matt 4:4), and even individual letters (Matt 5:18).

But in John 5:39, Jesus condemns the Bible study habits of the Jewish religion leaders. Or maybe we can say that He condemns the reason they go to Scripture. He says,

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life…

[Read more…]

If the Bible doesn’t teach the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture, where does that leave us regarding the Bible? Is it just a “man-made book” after all? Is it full of errors? Is it in any way authoritative for our lives? Can we trust it to accurately teach us about God and ourselves? What sort of book is it? How can we use it? What is it good for?

It is to these questions we now turn in the next several posts.

God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It?

When I first began to examine the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture, it was because I saw so much Bible-abuse in our churches and from our pulpits, that is, people, pastors, and even seminary professors using the Bible in ways that made me extremely uncomfortable. Their approach often seemed to boil down to the simple idea that “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

Aside from being illogical (it confuses their “understanding the Bible” with “the Bible” itself), this is a terribly dangerous way of reading the Bible and reveals a vast ignorance of what kind of book the Bible is.

Often, when you run into someone like this, if you disagree with them, they accuse you of disagreeing with God. And when you try to explain that you are not disagree with God, but that you just understand the Bible differently, then they start accusing you of not believing in inspiration, or not believing the Bible is inerrant, or any number of things which completely miss the entire point.

[Read more…]

There is no verse in Scripture which specifically states that the authors of Scripture were in some fashion under the control of God when they wrote.

We already looked at 2 Timothy 3:16, and saw the the term “inspiration” there refers not to the writing of Scripture, but to the reading of Scripture. When we read the Bible, God inspires us through it to be the kind of people He desires in this world.

In this post, I want to briefly look at several other passages, and give a short summary of what they seem to say about the Inspiration of Scripture.

John 14:26

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Jesus is speaking to the apostles and telling them that the Holy Spirit will teach them and help them remember what Jesus said. This is one of the reasons that the early church generally required “apostolic authorship” as a condition for books being accepted into the New Testament (I will write about “Canonization” later).

[Read more…]

Yesterday we looked at several of the translation problems surrounding 2 Timothy 3:16, and some of the ways that translators have sought to solve these problems. In this post, I want to propose my own suggested translation of this verse.

The reason this verse is so critical is because it is the only verse in the Bible which specifically speaks of the inspiration of Scripture, and if we have misunderstood the verse, then we have misunderstood inspiration. And if we have misunderstood inspiration, then we have misunderstood how we got our Bible and how to use it.

Before I explain what my suggested translation is, I want to explain how I arrived at it.

The Method to My Madness

First, I’ve been reading and studying theology for over twenty years now. So while I am not a wisened old-timer, I am also not a new kid on the block. This doesn’t mean I’m right, it just means that I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a while.

Second, over the past three years, I’ve done a lot of reading from N. T. Wright, Walter Wink, and Walter Brueggemann which challenged my view of Scripture. More recently, I read some entries in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament which challenged my thinking regarding the view of inspiration itself. Here are two of these quotes:

2 Tim 3:16 is not using a specific term from the world of enthusiasm, nor referring to any particular theory thereanent. As in the NT as a whole, there is also no mention of the sacredness of Scripture (VI:454).

[Read more…]

Is the inspiration of Scripture taught in Scripture?

Maybe… Maybe not…

The primary text in Scripture used to support the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture is 2 Timothy 3:16.

The key phrase of this verse is most often translated as following:

All Scripture is inspired…

Seems pretty clear, right? So I guess that settles it. Scripture must be inspired.

Except that it’s not quite that easy.

The phrase is notoriously difficult to translate, and even more difficult to understand.

Translating 2 Timothy 3:16

First, the word “inspired” is a translation of the Greek word, theopneustos. The most literal translation might be “God-breathed” which is reflected in some translations. But even then, what does this mean? That Scripture is the breath of God? That Scripture was spoken by God? Even when translations use the word “inspired” what does that mean? How does it differ from being inspired by a beautiful sunset or piece of music?

[Read more…]

The Doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture did not begin with Christianity. It was actually an idea that was carried over from Judaism, with some slight modifications.

Jewish View of the Inspiration of Scripture

The Jews believed in the sacredness of Scripture. But different parts of the Bible were sacred in different ways. There was almost a sliding scale of sacredness.

For example, they divided the Hebrew Scriptures into three parts: The Law, the Writings, and the Prophets. The Law was the most sacred of all the Scriptures. But curiously, it was not inspired. Instead, the common Jewish belief is that parts of the Law were inscribed by God’s own hand, (such as the Ten Commandments), and the rest was dictated by God to Moses.  They even believed in the preexistence of the Law, and that it has existed eternally in heaven, and was only recorded by Moses when God dictated it to him.

[Read more…]

What would you say if I formed a doctrine based on one hard-to-translate word which is found only one time in the entire Bible?

In other words, what if I formed an entire doctrine not only from just one verse in the Bible, but from one word in that one verse?

It does happen. Though it is more than one word, the Mormon practice of “baptism for the dead” is based on one verse out of 1 Corinthians. And we all scoff at them. How could they be so foolish, to believe such thing based on one difficult statement in one verse out of the entire Bible? There are other examples as well, but if  you or I tried to invent a doctrine today based from one difficult word from one verse in the entire Bible, we would be mocked. This is not the proper way of doing theology.

Ironically, one of the key doctrines in Christianity is also based from one word in one verse in the Bible. This is the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture. That’s right. ONE VERSE. And not only that, but the word in this verse is notoriously difficult to translate. The verse is 2 Timothy 3:16, and we will look at this verse in more detail later. And yes, I am aware that there are other verses which support the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture, but the only verse which explicitly mentions “inspiration” is 2 Timothy 3:16 (and I will argue later that even this verse does not mention inspiration).

So while I understand the logic behind the doctrine, it seems that with a theological slight-of-hand we have developed a central idea to the entire Christian faith!

I find that scary. I find it troubling. More than that, I find it suspicious.

[Read more…]