Despite the rampant denial of God's exhaustive control over all human decisions by the majority of modern day evangelicals, there is still, within that same group, a strong tendency to affirm the inerrancy of Scripture. While we can rejoice at the preservation of this orthodox approach to the Bible, we must be diligent to note the theological inconsistency of denying God's sovereignty and adhering to inerrancy. For if man's will is truly free in the libertarian sense (independent from any outside or inside influences), then there is no way God could ever have inspired the Patriarchs, the Prophets, or the Apostles to write Scripture. God would have been violating man's free will if He chose to control him for the purposes of His revelation. For if man has an autonomous free will, who is to say he would not assert that free will against the best efforts of God and insert error into the Scripture? According to the libertarian, he has every right to do this. Thus, God could never have inspired Scripture, at least not in the plenary, word-for-word inspiration sense. Perhaps, in the libertarian view, men could have been inspired in the same sense as men are inspired to write songs and novels, but never in the sense that we would know God's authoritative, self-revealed will on any subject. God could have wooed men into writing echoes of His divine will I suppose. But they would only be that: echoes. We could never know what part was inspired by God and what part was inspired my man by virtue of his free will. This would be a sorry condition and thankfully is not the case. God has spoken clearly and our basis for believing he has done this to the exclusion of any defects in the message is our fundamental belief in the sovereignty of God. Consider the words of the apostle Peter:
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. -2 Peter 1:21 (ESV)
"For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man" indicates that the basis for all divine revelation depends on the sovereign initiative of God and not the will of man. To even think of man having an independent and absolutely free will is antagonistic to the idea of plenary, verbal inspiration and thus inerrancy. It is as illogical as believing the wind spins the fan of a mill and at the same time denying the wind's power and its right to have such control over the entire mill. So it is the same with plenary, verbal inspiration. Such revelation presupposes a sovereign God who superintends every act of the creature in such a way as to ensure that His message reaches His people without error. This is the logic behind Peter's words and why he states that "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (v.21b, emphasis mine)." It is interesting to note that the Greek verb used here can be literally translated "to be forcefully borne along." Peter's point is emphatic: the inspired and holy Writ came not by virtue of man's will but by the sovereign and active control of God. And the delightful result of such divine oversight: the inerrant and infallible Word. As C.H. Spurgeon poignantly put it:
The Bible is a vein of pure gold, unalloyed by quartz or any earthly substance. This is a star without a speck, a sun with a blot, a light without darkness, a moon without it's paleness, and a glory without a dimness. O Bible! It cannot be said of any other book that it is perfect and pure, but of the Bible we can declare that all wisdom is gathered up in it without a particle of folly. This is the judge that ends the strife where wit and reason fail. This is the Book untainted by any error, but is pure, unalloyed, perfect truth. -"Pure, Unalloyed, Perfect Truth", C.H. Spurgeon
No comments:
Post a Comment