All attempts made to discredit the inspired word “finally devolves” or is finally handed over to the Holy Spirit, the Author of the sacred Writings, the written inspired word being the Holy Spirits “registers and transcripts.” Use of the word “transcript” tends toward the understanding of the Holy Spirit dictating the inspired word. The following is a polemic against Enlightenment theological erosion and a call to return to pre-critical Theological categories by looking at two principal passages on the Doctrine of Inspiration — 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and 2 Peter 1:19-21.

The formulation of the doctrine of inspiration is in large part been an apologetic record of the doctrine’s historic defense. The adjectives immediate, verbal, plenary, now codified in Protestant Orthodoxy, and later the adjective derivative, aid the Church in specifically defining inspiration and enabling the Church to give both a didactic and apologetic response. Christianity is wholly dependent on the inspired Word. If there is no inspiration, there is no Christianity.

“The internal witness is one alone; namely of the holy Ghost inwardly speaking to our heart, and persuading us that those writings are inspired of God, and sealing them up in our hearts, Eph. 1:13; 1 John 2:20, 27, Ye have an anointment of the Lord, and this anointment teaching you all things. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, can easily discern his power speaking in the Scriptures….And this testimony properly maketh for our confirmation, and this alone doth satisfy us, being known of them alone that are converted unto Christ, which doth evermore agree with the Scripture, without which the testimony of the Church can be no weight with us. For as none but God alone is a fit witness to testify of himself in his word, even so the word never findeth credit in our hearts, till such time as it be sealed up unto us by the inward testimony of the Spirit.”

William Bucanus, Body of Divinity, 42, 45-46.

“This doctrine is of the utmost importance; for, if you take away the influence of the Holy Spirit from the members of the church, then the very Gospel of Christ will be no more than a sublime speculation, as ineffectual to change the heart or reform the world as the pagan philosophy. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is the inestimable promise made to the church; if therefore we would read the Bible for our reproof, our correction, our instruction in righteousness, we must before, and as we read, pray to God for his influence and teaching.”

Henry Venn, The Complete Duty of Man, or A System of Doctrinal and Practical Christianity designed for the use of families, 1763, Revised and Corrected by H. Venn, (New York: American Tract Society, 1838), 391.

The process by which the words of the Canon were collated cannot be classified, categorized, or easily referenced because, as we have seen, all external criteria for canonicity fails, which also includes the effects of divine providence are only seen after the fact. The product, or Canon, does not divulge how the words were identified as canonical other than that they were immediately inspired and show the evidence of that inspiration as surely as does the presence of light. The question of the truth of Matt. 5:18, for example, then deals with the inspired character of a product brought about by a historically unquantifiable process. Unquantifiable means unspecifiable or unidentifiable. That is, the historical collating process of the canon is not bound to a system based on a text type, a neutral text, an older, shorter, harder to read text, a text from which another text would derive its origin, is not based on majority readings, is not part of a genealogical system by any name, is not part of any system.

The Muratorian Canon (175-225 AD)  was the earliest official list produced by the Church. It was not sanctioning a canon but recognizing a list of authoritative, self-attesting, self-authenticating, self-interpreting texts received by believers. This early list omits Hebrews, 2 Peter and James, also 1 Peter but this is considered an unintentional omission. The word “canon” is not yet used but the list is “reckoned,” “received,” and “read” in the churches. These words speak of a closed collection of books – that there would be no more added to the books that were “recognized.” The criteria were: 1. Apostolicity; 2. Inspiration; 3. Historical authenticity; 4. Rejection of anything that could not belong to the Apostolic period; 5. Wide church acceptance of the text – accepted by all believers.

Presbyterian scholar and Westminster Professor John Murray articulates the “imprints” of God’s Authorship upon Scripture, writing, “If, as has been shown in the earlier part of this discussion, Scripture is divine in its origin, character and authority, it must bear the marks of divinity. If the heavens declare the glory of God and therefore bear witness to their divine Creator, the Scripture as God’s handiwork must also bear the imprints of his authorship. This is just saying that Scripture evidences itself to be the Word of God; its divinity is self-evidencing and self-authenticating. The ground of faith in Scripture as the Word of God is therefore the evidence it inherently contains of its divine authorship and quality. “

Theological Grounding Episode 3:The Connection Between Apostolic Preaching & the Written Word of God This Apostolic witness through the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ provides the matrix for a New Testament canon. The central thought is that the authoritative preaching of the Apostolate brought about the emergence of a new authoritative body of material, the New Testament, to stand alongside the Old Testament.

Tonight 8/22 at 7:30 we will hold the thirteenth lecture of series three on “A Theological Grounding for a Standard Sacred Text –The issue of Dictation

Lamothe likewise writes, “When the Old Testament is cited by the Apostles, they usually call it the Scripture by way of excellency; as when St. Paul, speaking of an Oracle dictated by the mouth of God Himself, says, For what saith the Scripture, cast out the bondwoman and her son (Gal. 1:30),”^[1] Again, quoting Eusebius, Lamothe finds that,

“in the Ecclesiastical History that the heretics who denied the Divinity of our Lord, had the confidence to falsify the Scripture, to accommodate the Text to their opinions. Upon which the author of the primitive ages says, that it was not likely that the heretics were ignorant how criminal an enterprise of the nature was: For, says he, either they believed not that the Sacred Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Ghost; and so were infidels; or they imagine themselves to be wiser than the Holy Ghost, and then what are they other than demoniacs.” Euseb. h.e.1.5.c.ult.^[2]

God was the primary author of sacred Scripture, the Holy Spirit the active creative agent, and the penmen were secondary, the writers of inspired text. Ames says that Scripture’s inspiration “may serve to admonish us, not so much to meddle in the Scriptures, as if we were in another man’s ground, or in those things which belong unto others and not unto ourselves,”^[3] good and timely counsel for today.

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[1] C.G. Lamothe, The Inspiration of the New Testament Asserted and Explained in Answer to some Modern Writers (London, Printed for Thomas Bennet, at the Half-Moon in ST. Paul’s Church-yard, 1694), 24.

[2] Lamothe, Inspiration, 32.

[3]Ames, Exposition, 251.

Don’t miss this important study of the Immediate inspiration for Christian theology, ecclesiology, and personal edification, Tuesday 8/22 at 7:30pm.

Tonight 8/15 at 7:30 we will hold the twelfth lecture of series three on “A Theological Grounding for a Standard Sacred Text –The Doctrine of Immediate Inspiration and a Standard Sacred Text , part 3.”

The Apologetic Aspect of Inspiration

            The formulation of the doctrine of inspiration is in large part been an apologetic record of the doctrine’s historic defense. The adjectives immediate, verbal, plenary, now codified in Protestant Orthodoxy, and later the adjective derivative, aid the Church in specifically defining inspiration and enabling the Church to give both a didactic and apologetic response. Christianity is wholly dependent on the inspired Word. If there is no inspiration, there is no Christianity.[1] Three factors prove the necessity of the Scripture: the preservation of the word; its vindication; and its propagation.[2] In explanation of these necessities, Turretin writes,

It was necessary for a written word to be given to the church that a canon of true religious faith might be constant and unmoved; that it might easily be preserved pure and entire against the weakness of memory, the depravity of men and the shortness of life; that it might be more certainly defended against the frauds and corruptions of Satan; that it might more conveniently not only be sent to the absent and widely separated, but also be transmitted to posterity.[3]

Richard Allestree (1622-1681)

Richard Allestree in 1678 wrote The Lively Oracles Given to us or The Christian’s Birth-right and Duty, in the custody and use of the Holy Scripture.[4] His structured insights into the Doctrine of Inspiration are included here for the edification of the reader. He writes,

And for this, God (whose care is equal for all successions of men) hath graciously provided, by causing Holy Scriptures to be written, by which he hath derived on every succeeding age the illumination of the former.[5]

Allestree considers the consistency of the illumination of the Scripture a matter of trans-generational succession because it is written and preserved. He goes on to say,

And for that purpose, endowed the writers not only with that moral fidelity requisite to the truth of history, but with a divine Spirit, proportionable to the great design of fixing an immutable rule of faith and manners.[6]

The active, creative instrumentality of the Spirit assured fidelity in historical matters, a point lost in contemporary theological formulas of inerrancy, including “fixing an immutable rule” in matters of faith and practice. An immutable rule depends wholly on an immutable word. Allestree notes the congruence between writers of Scripture were first those who communicated the gospel orally and their written message. “And to give us fuller security therein,” Allestree comments,

he has chosen no other penmen of the New Testament, than those who were first oral promulgators of our Christian religion, so they have left to us the very same doctrine they taught the Primitive Christians. He that acknowledges them divinely inspired in what they preached, cannot doubt them to be so in what they wrote.[7]

Considering the inspired text from the preparation of the penmen, Allestree notes that God used to preach the good news in the early church were also those chosen to write the inspired text. From the penmen’s perspective, what the Spirit gave them to write was in large part already known and articulated, (Luke 1:1-4). The Holy Spirit as the active, creative agent worked through holy men, men who had already proven themselves to be witnesses of Jesus Christ.

A connection is made between the Apostolic authority and the inspired word that is currently read. Allestree continues,

So that we may enjoy virtually and effectively what wish of the devout Father, who desired to be Saint Paul’s auditor, for that hears any of the Epistles read, is as really spoken to by Saint Paul, as those who were within the sound of his voice: Thus God who in times past spake at sundry times, and in diverse manners to the prophets, and in the latter days by his son, Heb. 1:1-2, continues still to speak to us by these inspired writers, and what Christ once said to his disciples in relation to their preaching, is no less true of their writings: He that despiseth you, despiseth me, Luke 10:16.[8]

Here Allestree demonstrates his understanding the continuity between “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” (2 Peter 1:21), and that these same holy men were the penmen of the inspired word. ^[9] The Apostolic message, (though not all the penmen were Apostles) is the content of the inspired written word. That is, when we read the inspired written Word, it is to hear the voice of the Apostle, as if sitting under his preaching. Allestree concludes with a note again reinforcing God as the Author of the inspired word. Cognizant of the constant attack upon Scripture, he writes,

All the contempt that is any time flung on these sacred Writings, rebounds higher, and finally devolves on the first Author of those doctrines, whereof these are the registers and transcripts.[10]

All attempts made to discredit the inspired word “finally devolves” or is finally handed over to the Holy Spirit, the Author of the sacred Writings, the written inspired word being the Holy Spirits “registers and transcripts.” Use of the word “transcript” tends toward the understanding of the Holy Spirit dictating the inspired word. The following is a polemic against Enlightenment theological erosion and a call to return to pre-critical Theological categories by looking at two principal passages on the Doctrine of Inspiration — 2 Timothy 3:15-17 and 2 Peter 1:19-21.

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[1] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992), 57. On “The Necessity of Scripture” Turretin writes, “Hence the divine ordination being established, it made necessary to the church, so that it pertains not only to the well-being (bene esse) of the church, but also to its very existence (esse). Without it the church could not now stanv. So, God was indeed not bound to the Scriptures, but he has bound us to them.”

[2] Turretin, Institutes, 58.

[3] Turretin, Institutes, 58. See Willet, Romans, 1611, 479: “We are then only in matters of faith to have recourse unto the Scriptures, not unto written traditions, whether the papists would send us, for they are uncertain, mutable, variable, and therefore can be no rule of faith.” 

[4] Richard Allestree (1619-1681) (also Allestry) was a royalist divine and provost of Eton College, son of Robert Allestree, and a descendant of an ancient Derbyshire family. He was born at Uppington in Shropshire and educated at Coventry, and later at Christ Church, Oxford, under Richard Busby. He entered as a commoner in 1636, was made student shortly afterwards, and earned the degree of B.A. in 1640 and of M.A. in 1643. At the Restoration he became canon of Christ Church, as a Doctor of Divinity and city lecturer at Oxford. In 1663 he was made chaplain to the king and regius professor of divinity. Allestree died on the 28th of January 1681, and was buried in the chapel at Eton College, where there is a Latin inscription to his memory. His lectures, with which he was dissatisfied, were not published. Allestree was a man of extensive learning, of moderate views and a fine preacher.

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[5] Richard Allestree, The Lively Oracles Given to us or The Christian’s Birth-right and Duty, in the custody and use of the Holy Scripture. By the Author of the Whole Duty of Man (At the Theater in Oxford, 1678), 4.

[6] Allestree, The Lively Oracles,4.

[7] Allestree, The Lively Oracles,4.

[8] Allestree, The Lively Oracles,5.

[9] See John Trapp, A Commentary Upon the Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs: Wherein the Text is explained, some controversies are discussed, and many remarkable matters hinted, that had by former interpreters been permitted. Besides sundry other Texts of Scripture (which occasionally occur) are fully opened, and the whole so intermixed with pertinent histories, as will yield both pleasure and profit to the judicious reader (London: Printed by T.R. and E.M. for John Bellamie, and are to be sold as his shop at the three golden Lions in the Corn-hil near the R. Exchange, 1650), 174 Trapp, referring to Solomon writes,“He was the Penman, God the Author.”

[10] Allestree, The Lively Oracles, 5.

Don’t miss this important study of the Immediate inspiration for Christian theology, ecclesiology, and personal edification,