I believe it, always have, that the Bible is inspired in its entirety, and by this I mean its words. I do not mean that God’s word is what He inspires within your heart when you read or hear the Bible. It’s the words themselves that are inspired by God. And, I do not mean that the human authors were either the victims of some Spirit-induced automatic writing or that they were trying to imperfectly communicate some inspiration in their heads. I mean the words themselves, objectively, are inspired. I also believe the Holy Spirit applies them to my soul, sometimes devastatingly, sometimes tenderly, as I read or listen.
I believe this because it is the claim of the Bible itself in many portions and in many ways and because this understanding of what the Bible is has fit perfectly with my study of God’s Word during the last fifty years.
But, there is a problem with Verbal Plenary Inspiration. It is the sinful human heart. We are so unutterably selfish and self-centered that our reading of the Bible can veer off track. There are at least three areas of problems common among us:
Problem Class One: We mistakenly believe that our favorite English Bible version is inspired and completely perfect. Now, if you ask Christians if they believe this, they will deny it. They will say it is the original Greek and Hebrew that were inspired. However, it has been my observation over long years that Christians go along day by day acting as if they believe the version they prefer is inspired. The extreme case is the believer who condemns any Bible other than the King James, and not the New King James, either. We are all most comfortable with a given translation in a familiar layout and binding. But we are headed for trouble if we act as if the words translated in our version are inspired. If that statement shocks you, then you should give some thought to whether you are living day by day in a way that actually contradicts what you believe. It is our human sinfulness, our complacency and comfort with the familiar that may be guiding our conviction on this issue. A particularly vivid example is the oft-quoted passage from II Timothy 2:15 saying, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” People who do not regularly use the King James version will go to it when quoting this verse if they want to support the idea of Bible study being about dispensational divisions in the Scripture. Of course, the verse is not about studying nor about dividing, as most any other translation of the original Greek will reveal.
Problem Class Two: We mistakenly believe that the Bible’s inspiration is chiefly found in the way it makes us feel when we read or hear it. It inspires us, especially our favorite passages. I discovered recently that I had never carefully read, heard read aloud, or even paid the slightest attention to the short little twentieth chapter of Isaiah. I probably skimmed it, noticed that it had no Messianic prophecy or words of comfort in it, and moved on. However, a few weeks ago I finished reading Isaiah 19 and moved on to chapter twenty, and I gave it the attention God’s Word deserves. The picture created in the mind while reading about Isaiah’s experience is so shocking as to be almost unbelievable. And to think Isaiah continued in this condition for so long is similarly almost unbelievable. Despite the fact that we say we believe in Verbal Plenary Inspiration, our minds rebel and try to find some spiritualization to explain this little chapter. Once we grapple with the facts of Isaiah’s experience, we find it hard not to cry out to God that He not ask us to do the same. Or, we skip right on looking forward to the comforting words in the fortieth chapter and get the music of Handel’s Messiah cued and ready. But God put that little chapter there for a reason. “All Scripture is inspired and profitable….” Our sinful selves try to limit God to the words we like.
Problem Class Three: We mistakenly read into the Bible our own preconceptions. Nearly all Christians will deny this. But allow me to ask a question: When you see the word “earth” in the Bible, what image comes to mind? I’ll bet it is the same one I see: the big blue marble photo taken on December 7, 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew on their way to the Moon. It is the most reproduced photo in the history of images. And, it is not at all the image Israelites would bring to mind upon hearing the word “earth.” The ancient Israelite would have seen a huge circle of land surrounded by sea water and covered with a dome to keep the waters above from entering, all set on pillars for stability. No, it wasn’t a very scientific image, but that is the problem. We tend to try to read into the Bible our own understandings of the world. That is called eisegesis, something we are warned against as we approach the Bible’s text. The real difficulty here is that most of us not only do not believe we do this but will fervently deny that we do. We read into the text what we have been told. Don’t believe me? Have you noticed that the creation story in Genesis 1 has three pairs of days, 1 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 6, where the realm is created on the former day and it is populated on the latter? It is perfectly obvious in the text. If you have never noticed this, it is because you are reading into the story your own understanding of what happened on the six days of creation, a sequential story taught from early Sunday School. It seems to me that the worst case of eisegesis in the 21st century is our misunderstanding of what Paul was writing about in Romans 1 about same-sex sins. It is a sordid matter and not to be discussed here, but the wickedness Paul was pointing to in his culture had nothing to do with rainbow flags, politics, or marriage.
So, when we say we believe in verbal plenary inspiration, let’s be clear that we are talking about the Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic words and the New Testament Greek words and what they meant to the original hearers not what we want to complacently read into them from our own 21st century culture. And, if you think a Bible verse is saying to you something diametrically opposed to how the intended recipients understood it, then you have a quite different view of what inspiration actually is.
As if the unrecognized sinfulness of our hearts is not enough, we compound the problems we have understanding the Bible with even more human self-centeredness. We actually are proud about the correctness of our own view of the Bible and use that view as a standard in accepting or rejecting of siblings in Christ.
For more on this topic, read the book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes by E Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien and visit www.biologos.org.