13. IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED?

In our last post, I pointed out some inconsistences in Caleb’s Hebron.  These inconsistencies create trouble for the Inerrancy Warrant (If the Bible is inspired, then it must be free from errors).  Now I wish to propose new warrants that will cover divine inspiration and inconsistencies. 

Let’s first explore some ideas advanced by Basil Vellas.¹ 

According to Vellas, since there is no way for man to grasp what God  reveals to him, he must receive “internal illumination” which will help him to understand and record what has been revealed.  This process of inspiration “does not exclude free will, thought or conscience, because it does not bring a Scriptural writer into a state of ecstasy.”²

Vellas goes on to cite the Blessed Theophylact as saying that “the Spirit spoke to each of the prophets and they transmitted what was said by the Spirit in the way they could.”  Just as salvation is a question of cooperation between God and man, so too in the case of inspiration do we find that the prophets and apostles are allowed to participate in revelation. 

This view of revelation, says Vellas, “prevented the Ortho­dox church     . . .  from accepting the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, which denies the author's personality.”  This permits Vellas to conclude that divine inspiration does not affect “historical and scientific questions and knowledge of everyday life which could easily be obtained by the authors through their own mental powers.”  Rather, “revelation and the divine inspiration which is conne­cted with it can be applied only to dogmatic and moral truths.”  He adds that “consequently there is a distinction in Holy Scripture between the vital and the non-essential, the per­manent and the transient, the divine and the human element.”

We capture Vellas’ insights in three warrants.  The first is a Revelation Warrant:  Inspired men contribute to the revelation they proclaim.  A Biblical Errancy Warrant naturally follows:  If there are errors in the Bible, they reflect the human contributions made to the records of divine revelation.  The third is a new Biblical Inerrancy Warrant:  Dogmatic and moral truths in the Bible are inerrant.  Let’s apply these warrants to the case of Hebron.

We first ask whether the history of Hebron is something which a divinely inspired author could have provided from his own resources.  Certainly; this agrees with the Revelation Warrant.  Then, whether the muddled history of Hebron suggests errors.  It certainly seems like it, so the Biblical Errancy Warrant applies.  Finally, we ask whether Hebron’s history has a bearing on dogmatic or moral truths.  Of course not; if we wish to suggest that the history of Hebron cannot be accepted at face value as factually true, our new Biblical Inerrancy Warrant clears us to do so.    

By the application of these three warrants, we see that we do not have to treat Hebron as a divinely inspired history whose contradictions must be vigorously whisked away with the broom of piety, nor do we have to concede that the Bible is not inspired.  Rather, we candidly admit that Hebron poses an interesting problem of history and manuscript transmission, without having any bearing on divine inspiration or revelation.

All this goes to show the value of identifying and proposing warrants for our evidence. 

If we retain a warrant to the effect that Biblical inerrancy requires the Bible to have no errors, any evidence of inconsistency—really, the tiniest disagreements among the manuscripts—becomes grounds for dismissing the divine inspiration of the authors and the revelation they proclaimed. 

If we retain a warrant to the effect that Biblical inerrancy does not entail zero-tolerance for errors in the Bible, evidence of inconsistency does not even touch divine inspiration or revelation, let alone dismiss them. 

 

ENDNOTES

1.  All quotes in this essay are from Basil Vellas, “The Authority of the Bible according to the Eastern Orthodox Church,” in Ευχαριστήριον, τιμητικός Τόμος Αμίλκα Αλιβιζάτου (Athens: 1958), 490-503 (http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/ index.html [accessed July 9, 2018]).  I hope in the future to have the hard copy of this book and provide more specific references.

2.  Here Vellas alludes to the kind of prophesy that involves what we would call ecstatic experiences.  Saul himself, when he was bent on killing David, was permitted by God to succumb to this when “he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night.  Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Sam. 19.24).