The Inspiration and Authority, Canon and Transmission of Holy Scripture
This text was originally published by Darian Press, Edinburgh, Scotland (1961).
I am going to discuss three questions relating to the Bible, namely, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the canon of Scripture, and the transmission of Scripture.1 They are fundamental to our study of the Bible and therefore we owe it to our younger people from time to time to examine our source of authority and to consider these practical questions relating to it.
Many older people were brought up in an atmosphere in which the Bible was regarded as the word of God without any questioning or criticism whatsoever. It is not so for younger people; in fact, nowadays many young people are taught from their youth up that it is intellectual dishonesty to take the Bible and believe what it says just because it is in the Bible. Therefore we ought to teach our young people how we got our Bible, what reason we have for regarding it as inspired, and what we mean by inspiration.
Some older people, too, sometimes feel a little insecure on these topics. They become perplexed when they hear some preachers say that in places the Authorised Version is inexact, while others follow the Revised Version, and yet others say they are both wrong and Darby is right. Some people find this very confusing, and they wonder how they can be sure that they are reading the word of God when they read their Authorised Version. And because they cannot themselves check a translation by consulting the original languages, they feel somewhat insecure.
There is no reason for anybody to feel insecure. I do not intend to raise any doubts in your mind whatsoever about the inspiration of Scripture, but altogether the reverse. Please let me make that clear from the very beginning: I want to buttress your faith by emphasising that your faith rests on reliable foundations. You may still believe with all your soul that all Scripture is inspired of God and is profitable. On the other hand I shall have some things to say that, to some, may sound just a trifle strange. We must face, for instance, the fact that there are mistakes of one kind and another in the Authorised Version, though on the whole it is a wonderful version and God has set his blessing on it. There are, of course, similar mistakes and inaccuracies in most, if not all, translations. Now this need not disturb us, nor will it disturb us when we understand what kind of mistakes these are and what has caused them. Indeed, if we will face the facts, our faith, instead of being weakened, will be strengthened.
Let us first, then, consider the inspiration of Scripture; and let me at once say clearly that I personally believe in the inspiration of Scripture fully and without reserve.
The two passages bear directly on the subject. The first is to be found in 2 Timothy 3:16–17:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (AKJV)
Incidentally, you will notice that this is a passage in which the Authorised Version differs from the Revised, which says ‘All scripture is inspired by God’. In my humble opinion, the Authorised Version is correct. It translates Paul as saying that all Scripture—a known body of Scripture, namely, the Old Testament—is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
Somebody will perhaps ask what is meant by ‘given by inspiration of God’. The word, literally translated, means ‘God breathed,’ and here it may be helpful to draw an analogy between Scripture and the creation of man. Man was made of the dust of the ground, but then God breathed into that man the breath of life and man became a living soul. In similar fashion, the words of the Bible are words of human languages and yet they are imbued with the very life of God. ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life,’ said the Lord Jesus (John 6:63). They emanate from God as his very breath. Inspiration, therefore, lifts Scripture altogether above the level of even the most celebrated writings of human authors.
If we ask about the mechanics of inspiration, the Second Epistle of Peter has something to say upon the matter, though it does not go into great detail. It says that prophecy came not by the will of man, the initiative was God's (see 1:20–21). Men spoke from God as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that those men wrote mechanically with their minds blank. When God used his servants, he used their faculties to the full. They were not behaving like robots; yet it remains true that they were borne along by the Holy Ghost as they spoke and as they wrote.
Let us see what this meant for our Lord. As in all other subjects, so here, it is advisable to begin with him. He himself said in that famous prayer of his, recorded in John 17:7–8:
Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.
Outward and visibly our Lord was an ordinary man, yet he was charged with the tremendous task not merely of preaching good sermons, but of convincing his fellow men that he came from God and was God’s unique Son. How did he do it? In these verses he describes what I may call his technique: notice the plural? He did not just say " for . . . the word"; that is, he is claiming that God gave him not merely the general message (i.e. leaving him to put it in his own words), but that God gave him the particular words in which to put the general message. We must not take that to mean anything less than that every single word which our Lord Jesus spoke was a word given to him by God. Hence its inherent authority; for the authority of the word of God is not something that comes from the outside. No man could add any authority to the words of the Lord Jesus, as he himself said, ‘Not that the testimony that I receive is from man’. Though he was prepared for the people’s sake to refer them to John the Baptist's witness (see John 5:33–35), in the absolute sense he did not receive testimony from men. If some man had to tell us that Jesus was the Son of God, that man would be the final authority instead of our Lord himself. So was it with the words he spoke: since they were, in fact, all of them without exception, the very words of God, they brought their own testimony, their own authority, and men came to believe.
To show that I am not building too much on one isolated text, let me read you the words of John the Baptist himself on this very matter: ‘Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful’ (John 3:33). Do you see the argument? Whoever receives Christ's witness has set his seal to this, not merely that Christ is true, but that God is true, for the simple reason that he whom God has sent speaks the words of God (see v. 34a). If you believe Christ's words, then you are believing God, for they were God's words. Again, notice the plural. Not merely the general message, but all the individual words were the words of God; for he gives the Spirit without limit (v. 34b).
That, then, ought to suffice us for our Lord and his spoken ministry. But somebody will say: Yes, I believe that, I believe our Lord's divinity, I believe he spoke the words of God, but how can I be sure that here in the New Testament I have his words accurately recorded? Our Lord himself did not write a book, as far as we know, and his words are recorded by men. So how can we know that those words, thus recorded, are an accurate and authoritative record of what our Lord said and did?
And then there is a further question: When we read the Gospels and the Epistles, in many parts we are reading not merely what our Lord said and did, but we are reading explanations given by the early Christians who wrote these works. How can we be sure that the explanations and interpretations that those men put upon things are right? The supreme example is the death of our Lord Jesus, the significance of which is a matter that is still argued at length in Christendom. Some people, for instance, would tell us that his death is not to be viewed as a sacrifice. They say God would never require blood and sacrifice before he would forgive his erring children. So while they still claim to believe in His death they do not accept what the Apostles say about it and their interpretation of it. They claim that not only in the Epistles, but in the Gospels too, we find interpretation mixed up with the record of what our Lord said and did. That is quite true. Of course we get interpretation. What would be the use of his acts if they were not interpreted to us? What use his dying for us if, in the end, we did not know why he died or what was the significance of it? We have got to have interpretation. Only the question is, by what authority do these apostles and other New Testament writers interpret these things to us?
In this connection it is a very important thing to remember that our Lord appointed apostles while he was here on earth. It is not the fact that after Christ died that these people, called apostles, set themselves up as his interpreters. No, long before our Lord died, he chose these men, first of all that they might be with him and then that he might send them forth as his authoritative interpreters of what he said and did. It is in that sense that the Church is built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets. Apostles and prophets were the men chosen by Christ that they might officially tell us the significance of our Lord’s words and deeds. If you disagree with the apostles’ interpretation, whatever beliefs you hold, you must admit that you are not built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. And if you are not built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, then you are not in the building of which they are the foundation. Moreover, to reject an apostle sent by Christ is to reject Christ himself and the Father who sent him (see Luke 10:16).
Here are two passages in which our Lord was speaking to these men.
These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:25–26)
These are verses which we very often take to ourselves for our own encouragement. We take them to mean that, when we need it, the Holy Spirit will bring to our memory Scriptures which in past time we have read but have for the moment forgotten. And doubtless he does; but let us notice here that these verses are really talking about something far bigger. Observe the phrase: ‘These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you’. Our Lord never abode with any of us as he did with the apostles; but while he was with them here on earth, he spoke many things to them. Now he was going. How would they remember aright what he had said? Says our Lord: ‘But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you’. Here is our Lord's own provision and guarantee that the Holy Spirit would bring back to those apostles' memories the things that Christ had said. I invite you, then, to put both feet down solidly on this historical statement as our Lord’s guarantee that his apostles would accurately remember and record the things that we now have in our Gospels and Epistles, in so far as they relate the words of our Lord Jesus and his acts on earth.
But there are many things in the New Testament, somebody will say, that our Lord himself did not speak during his life on earth, and these cannot be classified as things brought back to the apostles' memories by the Holy Spirit. What guarantee, then, have we that these other things are from God and are not simply the Apostles' personal inventions? The guarantee is given by Christ in John 16:12–13. Here Christ says to his apostles: ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now’.
Well, then, when did he tell them these many things? The answer is given in the next verse: ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come’. The Lord, then, spoke these other things by the Holy Spirit; for just as when our Lord was on earth, he spoke not his own words but the words of God, so when the Holy Spirit came, the Holy Spirit spoke not his own words, but the words of Christ. ‘ He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’ (16:14). It was said that he would do two things. First, he shall guide you into all the truth. All the truth had not been told them when our Lord was on earth, but they were going to be guided into all the truth by the Holy Spirit when he came down from heaven. Once more, we are inclined to take these verses for our own comfort; and certainly the Holy Spirit within each believer is concerned, in so far as we give ourselves to him, to lead us on to understand all God’s truth. But it is a plain fact that he does not do this with all believers since many believers have been taken home within a few hours of their conversion; they went home practically ignorant of the Scriptures. Strictly speaking, our Lord is once more describing the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the apostles. He led them into all the truth. When they had finished writing they had told us all. There is no further need for any revelation from God, for we have all the truth. We may not yet understand all the truth, but the apostles were given it all. The scheme was not that the apostles would be taught a little and then each succeeding generation would be taught a little more; but "he will guide you [the apostles] into all the truth’. The apostles had it all and we have it all in this book. The biggest revivals that the Christian era has ever known have never resulted from the addition of some truth but merely from going back to what was already there. So it will always be, we shall never add anything to the Bible.
Secondly, ‘he will tell you of what is yet to come’. There was to be a prophetic element in our New Testament, and accordingly we find it so. So much, then, for our New Testament.
Next, I want us to think of these two related questions, inspiration and authority, as they apply to the Old Testament. Once more, we can begin our thinking with Christ and his own personal authority. It is true that the Jewish nation themselves, before Christ came, believed that certain books were the inspired word of God. But for us the supreme authority is our Lord.
I want to remind you, therefore, how he himself used the Old Testament to give a very vivid indication of what he thought it. Take first the Pentateuch, i.e. the first five books of the Old Testament. Our Lord was once asked his views on divorce and his reply was, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”?’ (Matt 19: 4–5). I am well aware that these verses from Genesis have some kind of spiritual and typical meaning (see Eph 5:31–32), but taking them in their primary meaning as they apply to the important matter of marriage and divorce, our Lord quotes them as the authoritative word of the Creator. His views, then, on the inspiration and authority of this part of Genesis are very clear.
Take the book of Jonah as another example, which stands in the second division of the Hebrew Bible. When our Lord found it necessary to denounce the Pharisees who had rejected him, he said that the men of Nineveh would rise in the judgment and condemn that generation. This fact vouches at once for the accuracy and truth of the book of Jonah. Some people, indeed, would maintain that the story of Jonah and the men of Nineveh is a piece of religious fiction, written to point a moral. They regard the lesson it teaches as a very worthy and important one, but they feel that the truth of the lesson is unaffected by the question whether the details of the story are history or fiction, and believe them to be fiction.
Let me illustrate the point, for their argument sounds very convincing to some people and we need to see the reason why it must be regarded as altogether unsatisfactory.
You all know the old story about the man who was going to market with his son and a donkey when they came across one of his neighbours and the neighbour suggested that the son get on the donkey. That done, they went a bit farther and came across someone else who suggested that the father ought to be riding the donkey; so the son dismounted and the father got on. Later, a third person suggested that they both ought to be riding on the donkey, while a fourth told them both to get off and carry the donkey, rather than make the poor animal carry them. They did so, but as they were crossing a bridge the donkey objected, kicked hard, fell into the river and was drowned. Well, nobody would be so silly as to ask who that man was, and where he lived and when. It does not matter who he was; perhaps there was never a man like that to do such a silly thing! But the story illustrates a very real truth that if a man tries to please everybody, he will probably end up pleasing nobody and suffering loss himself.
Some would say that the story of Jonah is of the same kind: in itself it is only a fairy tale, but it serves to teach and illustrate a very important spiritual lesson. But that interpretation of Jonah’s story must be wrong, for our Lord said that the men of Nineveh would rise in the judgment. These are solemn words. What would you think of me if I said that that man who carried the donkey would rise in the judgment? Or suppose I quote a Shakespearian character who had no real existence, and say that he or she will rise in the judgment and condemn self-righteous people. Would this not that the judgment, too, will not be real? Yet our Lord, who will be judge on that great day, solemnly declared that the men of Nineveh who repented at Jonah’s preaching will rise in the judgment as witnesses against the Pharisees. Obviously, he regarded the men of Nineveh's repentance as a historical event, and the book of Jonah as accurate history, whose lessons come with all the authority of divine inspiration.
And then there is another observation to make about our Lord’s use of the Old Testament: namely, his affirmation that hidden beneath the surface of the Old Testament were prophecies and indications which spoke of himself. He claimed, for instance, that Moses wrote of him (see John 5:46). Again, he said that the Scriptures prophesied that the Christ should suffer, rise again the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You can find Scriptures in the Old Testament which speak of his death explicitly. You can think of Scriptures that speak of the gospel going out to the Gentiles, beginning at Jerusalem. Isaiah is full of them. But where is the Scripture that tells us that our Lord was to be buried for three days? The Scripture which he himself elsewhere quoted was ‘as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Matthew 12:40). Had our Lord not said so, no one would ever have guessed that Jonah’s being in the belly of the whale was a sign that our Lord would be buried in the grave three days and three nights. But with such an interpretation he made it evident that the Old Testament histories carry deeper meanings beneath the surface, meanings of which their human authors were perhaps unaware.
You cannot take a something written by a human, however accurate, and deal with it like that unless its author deliberately wrote it as an allegory. But the Old Testament can be interpreted so, because it is in fact the word of God, and he who caused the record to be written in its time knew beforehand his own future purposes and indicated them sometimes by explicit prophecies and sometimes by implicit foreshadowings. And with Christ’s usage of the Old Testament, the apostle’s usage agrees completely.
Now let us think briefly of what inspiration does not imply. First, it does not imply that all the statements in the Bible are in themselves true, though it does mean that they are accurately recorded. So, for instance, Genesis accurately records the serpent’s statement, ‘You will not surely die’ (Gen 3:4). The record is true, but the statement is utterly untrue and false. Nobody would dream of saying that, because ‘You will not surely die’ is in the inspired Scriptures, it must have been true! It is an obvious lie. And there are other lies accurately recorded in Scripture.
Secondly, inspiration does not entail that we must necessarily approve of every action that is recorded in the Bible. Jacob's shady business deals are a case in point. Then again, not all the commandments recorded in the Bible are permanently binding. When our Lord first sent out the twelve apostles, he told them not to go to the Gentiles. Later on, after his resurrection, he commanded them to go to the Gentiles. So the one inspired Scripture is cancelled out by the other inspired Scripture.
Moreover, inspiration does not mean that everything is to be understood literally. When our Lord said that if our right hand causes us to sin we are to cut it off (Matt 5:30), he did not mean us literally to cut off our right hand. He was using picturesque language to exhort us to discipline ourselves severely so that we do not sin.
Finally, the way the apostles quote the Old Testament is very instructive. Sometimes Paul is content to quote a very general and not altogether strict translation. On other occasions he insists on extreme accuracy. This difference is quite understandable. A boat is, technically speaking, a different thing from a ship, but in many contexts the difference is not important, at least to nonexperts; and therefore it would not matter which term was used. But if I were talking to naval architects and arguing what kind of vessels were used in the Spanish Armada, I should have to choose my words carefully and clearly distinguish between a boat and a ship.
Now some parts of the Old Testament are documentary, so that when Paul quotes them in the New Testament, he insists on accurate quotation. In Galatians 3:16, for example, he insists on the difference between the singular and plural. There are other parts where the Old Testament is quoted, not word for word, but in the general sense of the passage. That is all that is required.
But now let us pass to the question of the canon. Here it is hardly enough to say, ‘I believe all the books inside the covers of the word of God’. Somebody is sure to ask who put these books inside the covers! The Bible was originally written on separate rolls and they were not in covers at all. Who, then, decided how many of these rolls should be put between two covers? Who, in other words, decided which books were to be regarded as the inspired word of God?
Again, I want to deal first with the Old Testament and then with the New. Interestingly enough, it is really only the Old Testament about which there is any big disagreement in Christendom at large. It is a matter of fact that the Roman Catholic Church would include in the canon of the Old Testament the writings commonly known as the Apocrypha, which the Jews do not include in their canon of Scripture and which Protestants by and large today do not include in the canon of Scripture. This raises the question of who is to decide how many books shall be included in the canon.
For the Old Testament, we shall be satisfied with the testimony of our Lord. His conversation in the upper room with his apostles shows that in his time the threefold division of the Jewish Scriptures (the law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms) was already in existence (Luke 24:44). But we may well ask how we know what books were in those three divisions in our Lord's time. It so happens that Josephus, the Jewish historian, writing not so very long after our Lord went back to heaven, says that the Jews honoured twenty-two books. When he lists them, we discover that he is grouping the books in a different way from how we group them and consequently his twenty-two books include all the thirty-seven books which the Jews still regard as canonical. And since Josephus was almost contemporary with the Lord himself, this is strong evidence that when our Lord referred to the Old Testament, he was in fact referring to the same books as Josephus. The Jews did not accept the Apocrypha which the Roman Catholic Church now accepts, and our Lord did not refer to it as the word of God.
With the New Testament the problem is slightly more difficult. There are many apocryphal books written in and after New Testament times—e.g., the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas; but remarkably enough, the books over which the early Christians disagreed were comparatively few. The vast bulk of the New Testament was readily acknowledged by Christians, almost automatically acknowledged. There have never been serious attempts to regard as inspired a large collection of other books. It is true to say that certain books which are now in the canon were doubted, and that certain other books were thought perhaps to be inspired and for a while were under consideration; but in the end, the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Christians turned against them.
There is no statement in the New Testament to tell us how many books should be in the New Testament canon. On what grounds, then, and by whom was it decided? My answer is—I submit it respectfully to you that it was and is a matter of private judgment. It is not the fact that any Church Council decided it for us, any more than some church council decided for us that Jesus was the Son of God. That must be left to every individual to decide. Nobody can decide for me that Jesus is the Son of God; I must decide it for myself. The evidence on which I decide it will include the testimony of other Christians, but in the end my decision must be my own and not a decision which I accept from some other authority. The creeds issued by church councils are only attempts to describe the Saviour, whom all Christians believed long before the creeds were issued. Similarly, there is no human authority powerful enough to decide for us what books are inspired. They must stand on their own evidence. And we should remember that the reason that each particular book is in the canon is because that book was and is regarded as inspired. It is not the other way round; it is not regarded as inspired because it is in the canon. When the church councils issued their canons of Scripture, they were but voicing what the majority of Christians already believed as a result of their own private judgment. But while it is a matter of private judgment, it is a bit late for anybody to disagree with the millions of godly men and women throughout the Christian era that have stood solidly together believing these books, which we now have in the canon, to be the inspired books, and not others. If I found myself disagreeing with this long line of Christian people, I should seriously question my judgment and think it very unlikely that I personally could be right and all the others wrong.
Finally, a very brief word on the matter of transmission. When we have decided which books are the inspired books, then there remains the question of transmission. The Scriptures were not originally written in English, but in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. It is those originals that Paul was referring to when he spoke of inspiration. But those originals had to be copied out, and in the course of copying many mistakes occurred. It is a fact that in the manuscripts of the New Testament there are thousands of differences, and it would be foolish and dishonest to pretend that they are not there. They are there; and when we find differences between, say, the Authorised and Revised Versions, it is often the case that the Authorised is following one set of manuscripts and the Revised is following another. I cannot here describe the long processes by which the experts decide in any one case where the manuscripts disagree and which manuscript correctly represents what was originally written. To describe these processes at length in this context might well give you an exaggerated impression of the difficulties involved. Rather, let me say that two of the greatest experts, Dr Hort and Bishop Westcott, gave it as their opinion that, of the thousands of differences, the overwhelming majority concerned unimportant matters which could be settled at once, and of the whole less than two per cent is in any doubt.2 There are, one must admit, some serious differences, but nothing fundamental need remain in doubt since we can always compare scripture with scripture. Take, for example, the big and important difference between the manuscripts in Revelation 22:14. Some manuscripts read: ‘Blessed are they that wash their robes that they might have right to the tree of life’. Other manuscripts read: ‘Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life’. Obviously, John did not write both. One of these readings is what John originally wrote; the other is the work of someone who substituted their own idea in the place of the inspired original. The experts are agreed that the first of these readings is the original and the second is spurious. That must be evident to the non-expert as well. The first reading makes eternal life and entrance to the heavenly city depend on washing our robes (i.e. in the blood of the Lamb ),2 and this agrees with what Scripture teaches. The second reading has not only changed what the Holy Spirit originally wrote but has substituted a ‘gospel’ of works. It makes eternal life and entrance to the heavenly city depend on keeping the commandments. This is the heresy that Paul denounces in the Epistle to the Galatians. Unfortunately, the Authorised Version has here followed the manuscripts which have this spurious and erroneous reading, and we cannot agree with the Authorised Version here unless we are willing to admit that whoever changed what John originally wrote had a right to change God’s inspired word. Elsewhere, of course, in the vast majority of cases, the Authorised represents more exactly what was originally written and makes it abundantly clear that our right to eternal life rests solely on the blood of Christ.
Finally there is the question of the translation of what was originally written. Here again we must show patience. One must not infer that the original was not inspired because translations differ. Sometimes it is difficult to translate ancient languages into English and our translators, worthy men and women, all down the years have laboured more and more to give us as exactly as possible what God caused originally to be written. But where translations differ, we can and must appeal to the inspired original. I can say no more now on this subject, but let nobody be confused or feel insecure because of the multiplicity of translations. There is safety in numbers! It does but show what tremendous power the word of God still has over the minds of men and men, that they are still prepared to give hours and years of thought to the translation of holy Scripture, seeking ever to render more accurately, exactly and fully what God has caused to be written. One can but say of the many translations ‘prove all things and hold fast that which is good’.
Let us, then, give thanks to God for the way he has preserved his word through the centuries in spite of all opposition, so that we have it in our own hands and in our own mother tongue now at this present. Let us give thanks, those who believe it, and let others be advised and warned and exhorted. If anyone reading this is not yet a believer and he has attempted to excuse their unbelief on the grounds that the Bible has been copied out so many times that nobody can be sure what was originally meant, let me warn them that they are putting their head in the sand. It is an argument that will not hold water. No scholar would uphold them in saying that we cannot trust the book because it has been copied out many times; the experts agree that for all practical purposes we have here in great integrity what God originally caused to be written. We are called upon to believe it with all our hearts.
Footnotes
1 The way in which the Scriptures were originally written in their original languages and have reached the present day by being copied out and then translated.
2 Since their day, the discovery of many important manuscripts has reopened some questions which they thought were closed. But the general situation remains as they described it.
3 Compare Revelation 7:14.