Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Doctrine of Inspiration and Authority of Scripture

B.B.Warfield says:
“The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Holy Spirit, by virtue of which their writings are given divine truthfulness, and constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice.” The biblical term is specifically “theopneustos” (2 Tim 3:16). It does not have the sense “inspire,” but “spire” that is, God-breathed. “What it says of Scripture is, not that it is „breathed into by God,‟ or is the product of the Divine „inbreathing‟ into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, „God-breathed,‟ the product of the creative breath of God. In a word, what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scripture are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them. No term could have been chosen, however, which would have more emphatically asserted the Divine production of Scripture than that which is here employed.”

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