DEFINITION OF THEOPNEUSTY.

This term expresses the mysterious power which the Divine Spirit exercises over the authors of the writings of the Old and New. Testaments, to make them cornpose them, just such as the Church has received them from their hands. “All Scripture,’ an Apostle said, “is theopneustic.”¹

This Greek expression, perhaps was new, even among the Greeks, at the time when St. Paul used it. Yet, if this term was not employed by the idolatrous Greeks, it was used by the hellenistic Jews.

Josephus,² the historian, cotemporary with St. Paul, employs a very similar term, in his first book against Appion, when, in speaking of all the prophets “who composed,” says he, “the twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament,” he adds, that “they wrote after the pneusty (or inspiration) which comes from God.³ And the Jewish Philosopher, Philo,⁴ himself contemporary with Josephus, in the account of his Embassy to the Emperor Caligula, using likewise a term very similar to St. Paul’s, calls the Scriptures theochristic oracles;⁵ that is, oracles given under the anointing of God.” Theopneusty is not a system, but a fact. As all the other events of the history of Redemption, this fact, attested by the Holy Scriptures, is one of the doctrines of our faith.

At the same time, it should be distinctly observed that this miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit had not for its object the sacred writers, who were only his instruments, and who were soon to pass away; but its object was the sacred books themselves, which were destined to reveal to the Church from age to age, the counsels of God, and which shall never pass away.

The influence which was exercised upon these men, and which they themselves were conscious of in very different degrees, has never been defined to us. Nothing authorizes us to explain it. The Scriptures themselves have never presented to us its mode nor its measure as an object of study. They speak of it always incidentally; they never connect our piety with it. That alone which they propose as the object of our faith is the inspiration of their word; is the divinity of their books; between these they make no difference. ‘Their word, say they, is theopneustic; their books are of God, whether they recount the mysteries of a past anterior to the creation, or those of a future posterior to the return of the Son of Man; the eternal counsels of the most High, the secrets of the human heart, or the deep things of God; whether they give utterance to their own emotions or record their own recollections, relate cotemporaneous events, copy genealogies or make extracts from inspired documents; their writings are inspired; their statements are directed by heaven; it is always God who speaks, who relates, ordains or reveals by their mouth, and who, to accomplish it, employs their personality in different degrees. For “the Spirit of the Lord was upon them, and his word upon their tongue.” And if it is always the word of man, because it is always men who utter it, it is likewise always the word of God, for it is always God that superintends, guides and employs them, They give their narrations, their—or their precepts, ‘‘not with the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but with the words which the Holy Spirit teacheth.” And it is thus that God has constituted himself not only the voucher of all these facts, the author of all these orders, and the revealer of all these truths, but that also he has caused them to be given to the church in the precise order, measure and terms which he has judged most conducive to his heavenly design.

If then we are asked how this theopneustic work was accomplished in the men of God? we should reply, that we do not know, and that we are not to know, and that it is in the same ignorance, and in a perfectly similar faith, that we receive the doctrine of the regeneration or sanctification of a soul’ by the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Spirit illumines this soul, purifies it, quickens it, consoles it, softens it; we recognize all these effects; we know and we adore their cause; but we consent to a perpetual ignorance of the means. ‘Thus let it be then with Theopneusty.

And if we were still asked to say at least, what these men of God experienced in their organs, in their will, or in their understanding, whilst they were inscribing the sacred pages, we should reply, that the powers of inspiration were not felt in the same degree by each of them, and that their experiences were not uniform; but we should add that the knowledge of this is almost indifferent to the interests of our faith, for that is concerned with the book and not with the men. It is the book that is inspired, and totally so. This assurance is sufficient for us.

Three classes of men, in these latter days, without disavowing the divinity of Christianity, and without pretending to decline the authority of the Scriptures, have considered themselves justifiable in rejecting this doctrine.

The one class has been totally ignorant, even of the existence of this action of the Holy Spirit; others have denied its universality; others again its plenitude.

The first, as Schleiermacher,⁶ Dewette,⁷ and many other German theologians, reject all miraculous inspiration, and attribute to the sacred writers only what Cicero attributes to the poets; afflatum spiritus divini, “a divine action of nature, an interior power like the other vital forces of nature.”

Others, like Michaelis,⁸ and as formerly, Theodore of Mopsuesta, while fully admitting the existence of an inspiration, is unwilling to acknowledge it, for more than a part of the holy books; for the first of the fourth evangelist for example, for a part of the epistles, for a part of Moses, a part of Isaiah, a part of Daniel. These portions of the Scriptures, say they, are from God, the others from men.

The third class, as Mr. Twesten in Germany, and as many theologians in England⁹ extend, it is true, the notion of a theopneusty to all parts of the Bible, but not to all equally, (nicht gleichmässig.)—Inspiration, according to them, is indeed universal, but unequal; often imperfect; accompanied by innocent errors; and extended, according to the nature of the passages, to very different degrees, of which they constitute themselves more or less the judges.

Many of them, especially in England, have divided inspiration into four kinds—inspiration of superintendence, by which the sacred authors have been constantly preserved from grave errors, in every thing which relates to faith and spiritual life; inspiration of elevation, by which the Divine Spirit, in raising the thoughts of the men of God to the purest regions of truth, has indirectly impressed the same characters of holiness and grandeur on their words; inspiration of direction, under the more powerful action of which, the sacred authors were guided by God both as to the selection and rejection of topics and thoughts; finally, inspiration of suggestion. Here, they say, all the thoughts and even the words, were given by God through a still more direct and energetic operation of his Spirit.

“Theopneusty,” says Mr. Twesten, “doubtless extends even to the words, but only when the choice or employment of them is connected with the interior religious life; for,” he adds, “we must make distinctions in this respect, between the Old and New Testaments, between the law and the gospel, between history and prophecy, between narratives and doctrines, between the apostles and their apostolic aids.”

All these distinctions, we consider fanefal; the Bible does not authorize them; the Church of the first eight centuries of the Christian era knew nothing of them; and we must regard them as erroneous and injurious.

Our object, in this book, is to prove; in opposition to these three systems, the existence, universality and fulness of inspiration.

Our first inquiry is, whether the Scriptures were divinely and miraculously inspired. We affirm it. Then we inquire, whether the parts of the Scriptures which are inspired, are so, equally and entirely; or, in other words; whether God has provided, in a definite though: mysterious manner, that the very words of the holy book should always be what they ought to be, and should be free from error. This we affirm, Finally, we inquire whether the whole Bible, or only a part, is thus inspired. We affirm this kind and degree of inspiration of all the Scriptures; the historical books as well as the prophecies, the Epistles as well as the Psalms, the gospels of Mark and Luke as well as those of John and Matthew; the history of Paul’s shipwreck in the Adriatic Sea, as well as that of the shipwreck of the Ancient world; the scenes of Mamre under Abraham’s tent, as those of the days of Christ in the eternal tents; the prophetic prayers where the Messiah, a thousand years before his advent, exclaimed in the Psalms; “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? They pierced my hands and feet; they cast lots for my garment;” as well as the narrative of the same events by St. John, St. Mark, St. Luke, or St. Matthew.

In other words, we aim to establish by the word of God—that the Scriptures are from God—that all the Scriptures are from God—and that every part of the Scriptures is from God.

At the same time, we would be understood in making this assertion. In maintaining that all the Bible is from God, we are far from thinking that this excludes man. We shall illustrate this point more clearly hereafter, but we deem it necessary to allude to it in this connection. Every word of the Bible is as really from man, as it is from God. In a certain sense, the Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter of Paul; and in a still higher sense, the Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter from God. Pascal might have dictated one of his Provincial letters to a mechanic of Clermont, and another to the Abbess of Port Royal. Would the first have been any less Pascalian than the other? ‘Surely not. The great Newton, when he desired to transmit his wonderful discoveries to the world, might have procured some child in Cambridge to write the fortieth, and some servant of his college to write the forty-first proposition of the immortal book Principii, whilst he dictated the other pages to Barrow and Gregory. Should we thence have possessed in any less degree, the discoveries of his genius and the mathematical reasonings which were to rank in our view, all the movements of the universe under the same law? Would the entire work have been any less Newton’s? Surely not. Perhaps at the same time, some man of leisure might have felt some interest in ascertaining the emotions of these two great men, or the simple thought of that child, or the honest prejudices of that servant, while their four pens, alike docile, were tracing the Latin sentences which were dictated to them. You may have been told that the two last, even when writing, were roving in their imaginations in the gardens of the city, or in the court yards of Trinity College; whilst the two professors, entering with lively transports into all the thoughts of their friend, and soaring in his sublime flight, like the eaglets upon their mother’s back, were plunging with him into the higher regions of science, borne along and aloft upon his powerful wings, and sailing enchanted in the new and: boundless space which he had opened to them.—Yet, you may have been told that, among the lines thus dictated, there are some which neither the child nor even the professors were able to comprehend. What do I care for these details; you would have replied. I will not spend my time upon them: it is the book, Newton’s book I want to study. Its-preface, its title, its first line, its last line, all its theorems, easy or difficult, understood or not understood, are from the same author; and that is sufficient for me. Whoever the writers may have been, and at whatever different elevations their thoughts have ranged; their faithful and superintended hand traced alike the thoughts of their master upon the same paper; and I can there always study with an equal: confidence, in the very words of his genius, the mathematical principles of Newton’s Philosophy. Such is the fact of Theopneusty.

It is thus that God, who would make known to his elect, in an eternal book, the spiritual principles of the divine philosophy; has dictated its pages, during sixteen centuries, to priests, kings, warriors, shepherds, tax-gatherers, boatmen, scribes, tent-makers. Its first line, its last line, all its instructions, understood or not understood, are from the same author, and that is sufficient for us. Whoever the writers may have been, and whatever their understanding of the book; they have all written with a faithful, superintended hand, on the same scroll, under the dictation of the same master, to whom a thousand years are as one day; such is the origin of the Bible. I will not waste my time in vain questions; I will study the book. It is the word of Moses, the word of Amos, the word of John, the word of Paul; but it is the mind of God and the word of God.

We should then deem it a very erroneous statement to say; certain passages in the Bible are from men, and certain others from God. No; every verse, without exception, is from men; and every verse, without exception, is from God; whether he ‘speaks directly in his own name, or whether he employs all the individuality¹⁰ of the sacred writer. And as St. Bernard says of the living works of the regenerated man, ‘that our will performs none of them without grace; but that grace too performs none of them without our will;” so must we say, that in the scriptures, God has done nothing but by man, and man has done nothing but by God.

There is, in fact, a perfect parallel between Theopneusty and efficacious grace. In the operations of the Holy Spirit in inditing the sacred books, and in those of the same Spirit converting a soul, and causing it to walk in the paths of holiness, man is in some respects entirely passive, in others entirely active. God there does everything; man there does all; and we may say of all these works, as St. Paul said of one of them to the Philippians; “it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do” And we see that in the Scriptures, the same work is attributed alternately to God and to man; God converts, and it is man who converts himself; God circumcises the heart, God gives a new heart, and it is man who must circumcise his own heart and make to himself a new heart. “Not only because we must employ the means of obtaining such an effect,” says the famous Pres. Edwards, in his admirable remarks against the Armenians, “but because this effect itself is our act, as well as our duty; God producing all, and we acting all.”¹¹

Such is then the word of God. It is God speaking in man, God speaking by man, God speaking as man, God speaking for man. We have affirmed it; and now must prove it..

Perhaps, however, it will be proper first to define this doctrine with more precision.

In theory, we might say that a religion could be divine, without the miraculous inspiration of its books. It might be possible, for example, to conceive of a Christianity without Theopneusty; and it might perhaps, be conceived that “every other miracle of our religion, except that, was a fact. In this supposition, (which is totally unauthorized), the eternal Father would have given his Son to the world; the all-creating Word, made flesh, would have undergone the death of the cross for us, and have sent down upon the Apostles the spirit of wisdom and miraculous powers; but, all these mysteries of redemption once accomplished, he would have abandoned to these men of God the work of writing our Sacred books, according to their own wisdom; and their writings would have presented to us only the natural language of their supernatural illuminations, of their convictions and their charity. Such an order of things is undoubtedly a vain supposition, directly contrary to the testimony of the Scriptures as to their own nature; but, without remarking here, that it explains nothing; and that, miracle for miracle, that of illumination is not less inexplicable than Theopneusty; without further saying that the word of God possesses a divine power peculiar to itself: such an order of things, if it ‘were realized, would have exposed us to innumerable errors, and plunged us into the most ruinous uncertainty, With no security against the imprudence of the writers, we should not have been able to give their writings even the authority which the Church now concedes to those of Augustine, Bernard, Luther, Calvin, or of a multitude of other men enlightened in the truth by the Holy Spirit. We are sufficiently aware how many imprudent words and erroneous propositions mar the most beautiful pages of these admirable writers. And yet the Apostles (on the supposition we have just made), would have been subjected still more than they, to serious errors; since they could not have had, like the doctors of the Church, a word of God, by which to correct their writings; and since they would have been compelled to invent the entire language of religious science; for a science, we know, is more than half formed, when. its language is made. What fatal errors, what grievous ignorance, what inevitable imprudence had necessarily accompanied, in them, a revelation without Theopneusty; and in what deplorable doubts had the Church then been left!—errors in the selection of facts, errors in estimating them, errors in stating them, errors in the conception of the relations which they hold to doctrines, errors in the expression of these doctrines themselves, errors of omission, errors of language, errors of exaggeration, errors in the adoption of national, provincial or party prejudices, errors in the anticipations of the future and in the estimate of the past.

But, thanks to God, it is not so with our sacred books. They contain no errors, all their writing is inspired of God. ‘Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost; not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth;” so that none of these words ought to be neglected, and we are called to respect them and to study them even to their least iota and to their least tittle; for this “scripture is purified, as silver seven times tried in the fire; it is perfect.” These assertions, themselves testimonies of the word of God, contain precisely our last definition of Theopneusty, and lead us to characterize it finally, as “that inexplicable power which the Divine Spirit formerly exercised over the authors of the Holy Scriptures, to guide them even in the employment of the words they were to use, and to preserve them from all error, as well as from every omission.”

This new definition, which may appear complex, is not so in reality; because the two points of which it is composed, are equivalents: to receive the one of which, is to receive the other.

We propose them, then, separately to the consent of our readers, and we offer them the choice between the two. The one has more precision, the other more simplicity; in as much as it presents the doctrine under a form more separate from every question about the mode of inspiration and about the secret experience of the sacred writers. Accept one or the other fully, and you have rendered to the Scriptures the honor and the faith which are their due.

We propose then to establish the doctrine of Theopneusty under the one or the other of these two forms; “the Scriptures are given and guaranteed by God, even in their very language;” and, “the Scriptures contain no error, that is, they say all they ought to say, and only what they ought to say.”’

Now, how shall we establish this doctrine? By the Scriptures themselves, and only by the Scriptures. When their truth is once admitted, it is from. them we must learn what they are; and when they have once asserted that they are inspired of God, it is still for them to say how they are inspired, and how far.

To undertake to prove, a priori, their inspiration, in arguing from the necessity of this miracle for the security of our faith, would be, to reason feebly, and. almost to imitate, in one respect, the presumption which, in another respect, imagines, a priori, four degrees of Theopneusty. Again, to undertake to establish the inspiration of the Scriptures upon the consideration of their beauty, their constant wisdom, their prophetic prudence, and all those marks of divinity which are there revealed, would be indeed, to rest our proof on reasonings doubtless just, but contestable, or at least contested. We must then stand upon the Scriptural declarations alone. We have no other authority for the doctrines of our faith, and Theopneusty is one of those doctrines.

At the same time, let us here guard against a misapprehension. It may happen that some reader not fully confirmed in his belief of Christianity, mistaking our design, and thinking that from our book he may gather arguments to establish his faith, shall be disappointed, and shall feel himself authorized to reproach our argument as having the capital defect of attempting to prove the inspiration of the Scriptures by that inspiration.

Here we must vindicate ourselves. We have not written these pages for the disciples of Porphyry, of Voltaire, or Rousseau; nor has our object been to prove that the Scriptures are worthy of faith. Others have done this; it is not our task. We address men who respect the Scriptures, and admit their truth. It is to them we assert, that the Scriptures being true, declare themselves inspired; and that being inspired, they declare themselves entirely so; whence we conclude that they must be so.

Certainly this doctrine is one of the simplest and clearest of all truths, to the mind humbly and rationally submissive to the testimony of the Scriptures. We may indeed hear modern theologians represent it as full of uncertainty and difficulties; but men who have desired to study it only by the light of God’s word, have not found there these difficulties and this uncertainty. Nothing, on the contrary, is more clearly or more frequently taught in the Scriptures, than the inspiration of the Scriptures. The ancients too, never found the embarrassments and doubts on this subject, which confound the learned of our day. For them the Bible either was of God, or it was not of God. Antiquity presents on this point an admirable unanimity.¹² But, since the moderns, in imitation of the Jewish Talmudists and Rabbins of the middle ages,¹³ have imagined sage distinctions between four or five degrees of inspiration, who can be astonished to find that difficulties and uncertainty have increased in their view? They contest that which the Scriptures teach, and they inculcate what the Scriptures do not teach. ‘Their embarrassment is easily explained, but the blame of it rests on their temerity.

The Bible renders so clear a testimony to its own full inspiration, that differences of opinion among Christians on a subject so well defined, are astonishing. And the explanation of it will only add so much testimony to the power and evil of prejudice. The mind, already preoccupied with objections which it has originated, distorts the sacred passages, and turns them from their natural sense, and by a secret labor of thought, forces itself to reconcile them with the difficulties which embarrass it. These Christians deny, in spite of the Scriptures, the full inspiration of the Scriptures; as the Sadducees denied the resurrection, because they found. the miracle inexplicable; but it must be remembered that Jesus Christ has answered: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” (Mark xii. 24-27.) It is then on account of this too common disposition of the human mind, that we have thought it best not to present our Scriptural proofs, until after a full examination of the objections raised against it.

That will be the subject of the next chapter.

We desire to present also, to our reader, a more precise exposition of our doctrine, and of some of the questions connected with it; but it has appeared to us preferable to defer this also to the last pages; both because it will be more acceptable when the difficulties shall have been maturely considered, and because we would not, at the beginning, repel, by a too didactic discussion, the unlettered readers who may come to these pages, seeking the edification of their faith.

We are about then, to commence, by-an attentive examination of the difficulties and the systems raised up against the doctrine of a plenary inspiration. These difficulties constitute objections; and these systems are rather evasions. We will study them both in the two succeeding chapters.

1) 2 Tim. iii. 15. Theopneust would be more exact, but less euphonie.

2) P. 1036, edit. Aurel. Allobr. 1611.

3) Κανά τὴν ἑπιπνοιαν τήν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ.

4) P. 1022. edit, Frankf,

5) Θέοχρηστα λόγια.

6) Schleiermacher der christliche glaube, Band 1, S. 115.

7) Dewette; Lehrbuch Anmerk. Twesten: Voslesungen tiber die Dogmatik, tome 1, p. 424, &c.

8) Michaelis, Introd. to N. T.

9) Drs. Pye Smith, Dick, Wilson.

10) Translator’s Note.—The word “individuality” is here employed, not in its ordinary, perhaps its only true signification; which is; separate, personal existence. The translator, for the sake of avoiding circumlocution, intends it to represent throughout this work—the expression of personal peculiarities, or individuality in the style and contents of a writing.

11) Edwards’ Remarks, &c. p. 251.

12) See on this subject the learned dissertation of Dr. Rudelbach; in which he establishes from history, the sound doctrines of inspiration as we have endeavored to establish them from the Scriptures, (Zeitschrift für die gesammte Lutherische Theologie und Kirche, von Rudelbach und Guericke. 1840.)

13) See our chap. 5, sec. 2, ques. 44.