According to Arminian theologian Roger Olson:
Nowhere does the Bible say, nor does Christian tradition require, that God literally "breathed out the very words" of the Bible. That's the dictation theory (sometimes called "verbal plenary inspiration). "Theopneustos" can and should be interpreted as "breathed into by God."
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/what-is-marcionism-my-response-to-a-ludicrous-accusation-.jpg
It's impressive to see how much error Olson can squeeze into two short sentences:
1) Verbal plenary inspiration doesn't presume that God "literally" breathed out the very words of Scripture. Verbal plenary inspiration doesn't require divine lung-power or a divine respiratory system. Divine "breath" is a metaphor for inspiration.
I assume Paul uses this metaphor in 2 Tim 3:16 for one or two reasons:
i) Both in Greek (pneuma) and Hebrew (ruach), the words are synonyms for "breath" and "spirit." To say Scripture is "breathed by God" trades on one connotation to attribute Scripture to the agency of God's Spirit.
ii) In addition, it trades on the other connotation to associate Scripture with the spoken word: Scripture as divine speech.
3) What makes Olson suppose that verbal plenary inspiration is equivalent to dictation? What does he even mean by that? Does he imagine that plenary verbal inspiration has God actually dictating a speech to the authors of Scripture, like a king dictating a letter to a royal scribe? Does he really think plenary verbal inspiration is that anthropomorphic?
Or is he using "dictation" as a metaphor? Does he think verbal plenary inspiration is equivalent to dictation? If so, how so? Does he mean the process is equivalent? But if "dictation" is metaphorical, then the actual process is clearly different. Or does he mean it's functionally equivalent? The effect is as if God dictated the message? If so, what's wrong with that?
Keep in mind that this is how Scripture distinguishes true prophets from false prophets. True prophets speak the very words of God. They deliver God's message.
4) Perhaps Olson's underlying objection is that plenary verbal inspiration violates libertarian freewill. If God controls the process from start to finish, that infringes on the libertarian agency of the speaker or writer by preventing him from making mistakes. Of course, it's because humans are normally fallible that inspiration is a necessary safeguard against error.
In that case, it's a question of theological priorities. What gives: libertarian freedom or verbal plenary inspiration?
5) Olson offers no lexical evidence that theopneustos means God "breathing into" rather than "breathing out" or simply "breathed." Standard lexicons (BDAG) and commentaries on the Greek text (I. H. Marshall) define the compound word as "God-breathed."
As far as the metaphor goes, since the context concerns the effect of divine agency, where Scripture is the effect of divine "breathing," then exhalation would be more consistent with the metaphor. Or, more precisely, verbalized breath. A divine utterance.
Today we have the benefit of scientific discovery that tells us that air is made up of physical particles. But it does us the disservice of creating a distinction that wasn't so clear at the time of the writing of scripture. That is to say that air is relatively unseen, like the non-physical realm. Monists perhaps saw the movement and resistance of air as physical and concluded that the spiritual was just as physical if unseen. Dualists understood air as being non-physical. So the use of the term likely didn't have as great a distinction as such between wind/breath and spirit.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth is that Olson just doesn't care about the truth, he just cares about the cause. In that sense he's a true believer in advancing the cause, even at the expense of the truth. But that's a very high purchase price to pay.
ReplyDelete