Warfield on inspiration-2

4. Christ's Declaration That Scripture Must Be Fulfilled:

The necessity of the fulfillment of all that is written in Scripture, which is so strongly asserted in these last instructions to His disciples, is frequently adverted to by our Lord. He repeatedly explains of occurrences occasionally happening that they have come to pass "that the scripture might be fulfilled" (Mark 14:49; John 13:18; 17:12; compare John 12:14; Mark 9:12,13). On the basis of Scriptural declarations, therefore, He announces with confidence that given events will certainly occur:

"All ye shall be offended (literally, "scandalized") in me this night: for it is written ...." (Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27; compare Luke 20:17). Although holding at His command ample means of escape, He bows before on-coming calamities, for, He asks, how otherwise "should the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Matthew 26:54). It is not merely the two disciples with whom He talked on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:25) whom He rebukes for not trusting themselves more perfectly to the teaching of Scripture. "Ye search the scriptures," he says to the Jews, in the classical passage (John 5:39), "because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life!" These words surely were spoken more in sorrow than in scorn: there is no blame implied either for searching the Scriptures or for thinking that eternal life is to be found in Scripture; approval rather. What the Jews are blamed for is that they read with a veil lying upon their hearts which He would fain take away (2 Corinthians 3:15). "Ye search the scriptures"--that is right: and "even you" (emphatic) "think to have eternal life in them"--that is right, too. But "it is these very Scriptures" (very emphatic) "which are bearing witness" (continuous process) "of me; and" (here is the marvel!) "ye will not come to me and have life!"--that you may, that is, reach the very end you have so properly in view in searching the Scriptures. Their failure is due, not to the Scriptures but to themselves, who read the Scriptures to such little purpose.

5. His Testimony That God Is Author of Scripture:

Quite similarly our Lord often finds occasion to express wonder at the little effect to which Scripture had been read, not because it had been looked into too curiously, but because it had not been looked into earnestly enough, with sufficiently simple and robust trust in its every declaration. "Have ye not read even this scripture?" He demands, as He adduces Psalms 118 to show that the rejection of the Messiah was already intimated in Scripture (Mark 12:10; Matthew 21:42 varies the expression to the equivalent:

"Did ye never read in the scriptures?"). And when the indignant Jews came to Him complaining of the Hosannas with which the children in the Temple were acclaiming Him, and demanding, "Hearest thou what these are saying?" He met them (Matthew 21:16) merely with, "Yea: did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou has perfected praise?" The underlying thought of these passages is spoken out when He intimates that the source of all error in Divine things is just ignorance of the Scriptures: "Ye do err," He declares to His questioners, on an important occasion, "not knowing the scriptures" (Matthew 22:29); or, as it is put, perhaps more forcibly, in interrogative form, in its parallel in another Gospel: "Is it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures?" (Mark 12:24). Clearly, he who rightly knows the Scriptures does not err. The confidence with which Jesus rested on Scripture, in its every declaration, is further illustrated in a passage like Matthew 19:4. Certain Pharisees had come to Him with a question on divorce and He met them thus: "Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? .... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." The point to be noted is the explicit reference of Genesis 2:24 to God as its author: "He who made them .... said"; "what therefore God hath joined together." Yet this passage does not give us a saying of God's recorded in Scripture, but just the word of Scripture itself, and can be treated as a declaration of God's only on the hypothesis that all Scripture is a declaration of God's. The parallel in Mr (10:5) just as truly, though not as explicitly, assigns the passage to God as its author, citing it as authoritative law and speaking of its enactment as an act of God's. And it is interesting to observe in passing that Paul, having occasion to quote the same passage (1 Corinthians 6:16), also explicitly quotes it as a Divine word: "For, The twain, saith he, shall become one flesh"--the "he" here, in accordance with a usage to be noted later, meaning just "God."

Thus clear is it that Jesus' occasional adduction of Scripture as an authoritative document rests on an ascription of it to God as its author. His testimony is that whatever stands written in Scripture is a word of God. Nor can we evacuate this testimony of its force on the plea that it represents Jesus only in the days of His flesh, when He may be supposed to have reflected merely the opinions of His day and generation. The view of Scripture He announces was, no doubt, the view of His day and generation as well as His own view. But there is no reason to doubt that it was held by Him, not because it was the current view, but because, in His Divine-human knowledge, He knew it to be true; for, even in His humiliation, He is the faithful and true witness. And in any event we should bear in mind that this was the view of the resurrected as well as of the humiliated Christ. It was after He had suffered and had risen again in the power of His Divine life that He pronounced those foolish and slow of heart who do not believe all that stands written in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:25); and that He laid down the simple "Thus it is written" as the sufficient ground of confident belief (Luke 24:46). Nor can we explain away Jesus' testimony to the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture by interpreting it as not His own, but that of His followers, placed on His lips in their reports of His words. Not only is it too constant, minute, intimate and in part incidental, and therefore, as it were, hidden, to admit of this interpretation; but it so pervades all our channels of information concerning Jesus' teaching as to make it certain that it comes actually from Him. It belongs not only to the Jesus of our evangelical records but as well to the Jesus of the earlier sources which underlie our evangelical records, as anyone may assure himself by observing the instances in which Jesus adduces the Scriptures as Divinely authoritative that are recorded in more than one of the Gospels (e.g. "It is written," Matthew 4:4,7,10 (Luke 4:4,8,10); Matthew 11:10; (Luke 7:27); Matthew 21:13 (Luke 19:46; Mark 11:17); Matthew 26:31 (Mark 14:21); "the scripture" or "the scriptures," Matthew 19:4 (Mark 10:9); Matthew 21:42 (Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17); Matthew 22:29 (Mark 12:24; Luke 20:37); Matthew 26:56 (Mark 14:49; Luke 24:44)). These passages alone would suffice to make clear to us the testimony of Jesus to Scripture as in all its parts and declarations Divinely authoritative.

6. Similar Testimony of His Immediate Followers

The attempt to attribute the testimony of Jesus to His followers has in its favor only the undeniable fact that the testimony of the writers of the New Testament is to precisely the same effect as His. They, too, cursorily Apostles speak of Scripture by that pregnant name and adduce it with the simple "It is written," with the implication that whatever stands written in it is Divinely authoritative. As Jesus' official life begins with this "It is written" (Matthew 4:4), so the evangelical proclamation begins with an "Even as it is written" (Mark 1:2); and as Jesus sought the justification of His work in a solemn "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day" (Luke 24:46), so the apostles solemnly justified the Gospel which they preached, detail after detail, by appeal to the Scriptures, "That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" and "That he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3,4; compare Acts 8:35; 17:3; 26:22, and also Romans 1:17; 3:4,10; 4:17; 11:26; 14:11; 1 Corinthians 1:19; 2:9; 3:19; 15:45; Galatians 3:10,13; 4:22,27). Wherever they carried the gospel it was as a gospel resting on Scripture that they proclaimed it (Acts 17:2; 18:24,28); and they encouraged themselves to test its truth by the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). The holiness of life they inculcated, they based on Scriptural requirement (1 Peter 1:16), and they commended the royal law of love which they taught by Scriptural sanction (James 2:8). Every detail of duty was supported by them by an appeal to Scripture (Acts 23:5; Romans 12:19). The circumstances of their lives and the events occasionally occurring about them are referred to Scripture for their significance (Romans 2:26; 8:36; 9:33; 11:8; 15:9,21; 2 Corinthians 4:13). As our Lord declared that whatever was written in Scripture must needs be fulfilled (Matthew 26:54; Luke 22:37; 24:44), so His followers explained one of the most startling facts which had occurred in their experience by pointing out that "it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David" (Acts 1:16). Here the ground of this constant appeal to Scripture, so that it is enough that a thing "is contained in scripture" (1 Peter 2:6) for it to be of indefectible authority, is plainly enough declared:

Scripture must needs be fulfilled, for what is contained in it is the declaration of the Holy Ghost through the human author. What Scripture says, God says; and accordingly we read such remarkable declarations as these: "For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up" (Romans 9:17); "And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, .... In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8). These are not instances of simple personification of Scripture, which is itself a sufficiently remarkable usage (Mark 15:28; John 7:38,42; 19:37; Romans 4:3; 10:11; 11:2; Galatians 4:30; 1 Timothy 5:18; James 2:23; 4:5), vocal with the conviction expressed by James (4:5) that Scripture cannot speak in vain. They indicate a certain confusion in current speech between "Scripture" and "God," the outgrowth of a deep-seated conviction that the word of Scripture is the word of God. It was not "Scripture" that spoke to Pharaoh, or gave his great promise to Abraham, but God. But "Scripture" and "God" lay so close together in the minds of the writers of the New Testament that they could naturally speak of "Scripture" doing what Scripture records God as doing. It was, however, even more natural to them to speak casually of God saying what the Scriptures say; and accordingly we meet with forms of speech such as these: "Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye shall hear His voice," etc. (Hebrews 3:7, quoting Psalms 95:7); "Thou art God .... who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage," etc. (Acts 4:25 the King James Version, quoting Psalms 2:1); "He that raised him from the dead .... hath spoken on this wise, I will give you .... because he saith also in another (place) ...." (Acts 13:34, quoting Isaiah 55:3 and Psalms 16:10), and the like. The words put into God's mouth in each case are not words of God recorded in the Scriptures, but just Scripture words in themselves. When we take the two classes of passages together, in the one of which the Scriptures are spoken of as God, while in the other God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures, we may perceive how close the identification of the two was in the minds of the writers of the New Testament.

7. Their Identification of God and Scripture:

This identification is strikingly observable in certain catenae of quotations, in which there are brought together a number of passages of Scripture closely connected with one another. The first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies an example. We may begin with Hebrews 1:5:"For unto which of the angels said he"--the subject being necessarily "God"--"at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?"--the citation being from Psalms 2:7 and very appropriate in the mouth of God--"and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?"--from 2 Samuel 7:14, again a declaration of God's own--"And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him"--from Deuteronomy 32:43, Septuagint, or Psalms 97:7, in neither of which is God the speaker--"And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire"--from Psalms 104:4, where again God is not the speaker but is spoken of in the third person--"but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, etc."--from Psalms 45:6,7 where again God is not the speaker, but is addressed--"And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning," etc.--from Psalms 102:25-27, where again God is not the speaker but is addressed--"But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand?" etc.--from Psalms 110:1, in which God is the speaker. Here we have passages in which God is the speaker and passages in which God is not the speaker, but is addressed or spoken of, indiscriminately assigned to God, because they all have it in common that they are words of Scripture, and as words of Scripture are words of God. Similarly in Romans 15:9 we have a series of citations the first of which is introduced by "as it is written," and the next two by "again he saith," and "again," and the last by "and again, Isaiah saith," the first being from Psalms 18:49; the second from Deuteronomy 32:43; the third from Psalms 117:1; and the last from Isaiah 11:10. Only the last (the only one here assigned to the human author) is a word of God in the text of the Old Testament.

8. The "Oracles of God":

This view of the Scriptures as a compact mass of words of God occasioned the formation of a designation for them by which this their character was explicitly expressed. This designation is "the sacred oracles," "the oracles of God." It occurs with extraordinary frequency in Philo, who very commonly refers to Scripture as "the sacred oracles" and cites its several passages as each an "oracle." Sharing, as they do, Philo's conception of the Scriptures as, in all their parts, a word of God, the New Testament writers naturally also speak of them under this designation. The classical passage is Romans 3:2 (compare Hebrews 5:12; Acts 7:38). Here Paul begins an enumeration of the advantages which belonged to the chosen people above other nations; and, after declaring these advantages to have been great and numerous, he places first among them all their possession of the Scriptures:

"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God." That by "the oracles of God" here are meant just the Holy Scriptures in their entirety, conceived as a direct Divine revelation, and not any portions of them, or elements in them more especially thought of as revelatory, is perfectly clear from the wide contemporary use of this designation in this sense by Philo, and is put beyond question by the presence in the New Testament of habitudes of speech which rest on and grow out of the conception of Scripture embodied in this term. From the point of view of this designation, Scripture is thought of as the living voice of God speaking in all its parts directly to the reader; and, accordingly, it is cited by some such formula as "it is said," and this mode of citing Scripture duly occurs as an alternative to "it is written" (Luke 4:12 replacing "it is written" in Matthew; Hebrews 3:15; compare Romans 4:18). It is due also to this point of view that Scripture is cited, not as what God or the Holy Spirit "said," but what He "says," the present tense emphasizing the living voice of God speaking in Scriptures to the individual soul (Hebrews 3:7; Acts 13:35; Hebrews 1:7,8,10; Romans 15:10). And especially there is due to it the peculiar usage by which Scripture is cited by the simple "saith, without expressed subject, the subject being too well understood, when Scripture is adduced, to require stating; for who could be the speaker of the words of Scripture but God only (Romans 15:10; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 6:2; Galatians 3:16; Ephesians 4:8; 5:14)? The analogies of this pregnant subjectless "saith" are very widespread. It was with it that the ancient Pythagoreans and Platonists and the medieval Aristotelians adduced each their master's teaching; it was with it that, in certain circles, the judgments of Hadrian's great jurist Salvius Julianus were cited; African stylists were even accustomed to refer by it to Sallust, their great model. There is a tendency, cropping out occasionally, in the Old Testament, to omit the name of God as superfluous, when He, as the great logical subject always in mind, would be easily understood (compare Job 20:23; 21:17; Psalms 114:2; Lamentations 4:22). So, too, when the New Testament writers quoted Scripture there was no need to say whose word it was: that lay beyond question in every mind. This usage, accordingly, is a specially striking intimation of the vivid sense which the New Testament writers had of the Divine origin of the Scriptures, and means that in citing them they were acutely conscious that they were citing immediate words of God. How completely the Scriptures were to them just the word of God may be illustrated by a passage like Galatians 3:16: "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." We have seen our Lord hanging an argument on the very words of Scripture (John 10:34); elsewhere His reasoning depends on the particular tense (Matthew 22:32) or word (Matthew 22:43) used in Scripture. Here Paul's argument rests similarly on a grammatical form. No doubt. it is the grammatical form of the word which God is recorded as having spoken to Abraham that is in question. But Paul knows what grammatical form God employed in speaking to Abraham only as the Scriptures have transmitted it to him; and, as we have seen, in citing the words of God and the words of Scripture he was not accustomed to make any distinction between them. It is probably the Scriptural word as a Scriptural word, therefore, which he has here in mind: though, of course, it is possible that what he here witnesses to is rather the detailed trustworthiness of the Scriptural record than its direct divinity--if we can separate two things which apparently were not separated in Paul's mind. This much we can at least say without straining, that the designation of Scripture as "scripture" and its citation by the formula, "It is written," attest primarily its indefectible authority; the designation of it as "oracles" and the adduction of it by the formula, "It says," attest primarily its immediate divinity. Its authority rests on its divinity and its divinity expresses itself in its trustworthiness; and the New Testament writers in all their use of it treat it as what they declare it to be--a God-breathed document, which, because God-breathed, is through and through trustworthy in all its assertions, authoritative in all its declarations, and down to its last particular, the very word of God, His "oracles."

9. The Human Element in Scripture:

That the Scriptures are throughout a Divine book, created by the Divine energy and speaking in their every part with Divine authority directly to the heart of the readers, is the fundamental fact concerning Scripture them which is witnessed by Christ and the sacred writers to whom we owe the New Testament. But the strength and constancy with which they bear witness to this primary fact do not prevent their recognizing by the side of it that the Scriptures have come into being by the agency of men. It would be inexact to say that they recognize a human element in Scripture:

they do not parcel Scripture out, assigning portions of it, or elements in it, respectively to God and man. In their view the whole of Scripture in all its parts and in all its elements, down to the least minutiae, in form of expression as well as in substance of teaching, is from God; but the whole of it has been given by God through the instrumentality of men. There is, therefore, in their view, not, indeed, a human element or ingredient in Scripture, and much less human divisions or sections of Scripture, but a human side or aspect to Scripture; and they do not fail to give full recognition to this human side or aspect. In one of the primary passages which has already been before us, their conception is given, if somewhat broad and very succinct, yet clear expression. No `prophecy,' Peter tells us (2 Peter 1:21), `ever came by the will of man; but as borne by the Holy Ghost, men spake from God.' Here the whole initiative is assigned to God, and such complete control of the human agents that the product is truly God's work. The men who speak in this "prophecy of scripture" speak not of themselves or out of themselves, but from "God": they speak only as they are "borne by the Holy Ghost." But it is they, after all, who speak. Scripture is the product of man, but only of man speaking from God and under such a control of the Holy Spirit as that in their speaking they are "borne" by Him. The conception obviously is that the Scriptures have been given by the instrumentality of men; and this conception finds repeated incidental expression throughout the New Testament.

It is this conception, for example, which is expressed when our Lord, quoting Psalms 110, declares of its words that "David himself said in the Holy Spirit" (Mark 12:36). There is a certain emphasis here on the words being David's own words, which is due to the requirements of the argument our Lord was conducting, but which none the less sincerely represents our Lord's conception of their origin. They are David's own words which we find in Psalms 110, therefore; but they are David's own words, spoken not of his own motion merely, but "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say--we could not better paraphrase it--"as borne by the Holy Spirit." In other words, they are "God-breathed" words and therefore authoritative in a sense above what any words of David, not spoken in the Holy Spirit, could possibly be. Generalizing the matter, we may say that the words of Scripture are conceived by our Lord and the New Testament writers as the words of their human authors when speaking "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say, by His initiative and under His controlling direction. The conception finds even more precise expression, perhaps, in such a statement as we find--it is Peter who is speaking and it is again a psalm which is cited--in Acts 1:16, "The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David." Here the Holy Spirit is adduced, of course, as the real author of what is said (and hence, Peter's certainty that what is said will be fulfilled); but David's mouth is expressly designated as the instrument (it is the instrumental preposition that is used) by means of which the Holy Spirit speaks the Scripture in question. He does not speak save through David's mouth. Accordingly, in Acts 4:25, `the Lord that made the heaven and earth,' acting by His Holy Spirit, is declared to have spoken another psalm `through the mouth of .... David,' His "servant"; and in Matthew 13:35 still another psalm is adduced as "spoken through the prophet" (compare Matthew 2:5). In the very act of energetically asserting the Divine origin of Scripture the human instrumentality through which it is given is constantly recognized. The New Testament writers have, therefore, no difficulty in assigning Scripture to its human authors, or in discovering in Scripture traits due to its human authorship. They freely quote it by such simple formulas as these:

"Moses saith" (Romans 10:19); "Moses said" (Matthew 22:24; Mark 10; Acts 3:22); "Moses writeth" (Romans 10:5); "Moses wrote" (Mark 12:19; Luke 20:28); "Isaiah .... saith" (Romans 10:20); "Isaiah said" (John 12:39); "Isaiah crieth" (Romans 9:27); "Isaiah hath said before" (Romans 9:29); "said Isaiah the prophet" (John 1:23); "did Isaiah prophesy" (Mark 7:6; Matthew 15:7); "David saith" (Luke 20:42; Acts 2:25; Romans 11:9); "David said" (Mark 12:36). It is to be noted that when thus Scripture is adduced by the names of its human authors, it is a matter of complete indifference whether the words adduced are comments of these authors or direct words of God recorded by them. As the plainest words of the human authors are assigned to God as their real author, so the most express words of God, repeated by the Scriptural writers, are cited by the names of these human writers (Matthew 15:7; Mark 7:6; Romans 10:5; compare Mark 7:10 from the Decalogue). To say that "Moses" or "David says," is evidently thus only a way of saying that "Scripture says," which is the same as to say that "God says." Such modes of citing Scripture, accordingly, carry us little beyond merely connecting the name, or perhaps we may say the individuality, of the several writers with the portions of Scripture given through each. How it was given through them is left meanwhile, if not without suggestion, yet without specific explanation. We seem safe only in inferring this much: that the gift of Scripture through its human authors took place by a process much more intimate than can be expressed by the term "dictation," and that it took place in a process in which the control of the Holy Spirit was too complete and pervasive to permit the human qualities of the secondary authors in any way to condition the purity of the product as the word of God. The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God's book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men's book as well as God's, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.