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The Inspiration
of the Scriptures: Part I
John Macleod
John Macleod (1872-1948) was Principal of the Free Church of Scotland College, Edinburgh. This address was published in The Evangelical Quarterly (1935).
When we speak of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures we are dealing with one of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It is from the Scriptures themselves alone that we can learn at first hand what the claims are that they make in regard to their own origin and authority. It holds of any of the doctrines of the faith that if we would know it we are called upon to learn it on proper authority. That is to say it rests on the statements made in the Bible in regard to it by Prophets and Apostles. It may pass into acceptance in the Church in currently professed form as a creed, and as such men may know what it is and discuss it as the recognized teaching of the Church. But the formulation which it receives in this shape is not the ultimate basis on which Christian truth rests. It may come to be as familiar in Christian circles as is the doctrine of the Trinity, and it may be looked upon as the authentic statement of what the Church holds. There is, however, something that lies deeper than ecclesiastical formulation and profession and recognition. To these things no higher authority than that of the Church attaches. What really matters is that what the Church teaches should be a true exhibition and representation of what is taught in the Scriptures. The authority that belongs to the teaching of Scripture rests in turn on the fact that the supreme author of Scripture is none other than God Himself. In other words it is because it has been breathed by God and so given by Him that it is possessed of its rightful infallible and final authority.
Now, in respect to the distinctive quality of Holy Writ as the Word of God we can learn, as we have said, what it is only from its own statements. There is no serious question as to the attitude adopted toward the Old Testament by our Lord and His Apostles. What that was we learn from the New Testament as an authentic witness to their teaching. The Christian response to this is one of acceptance. It is because they recognize that our Lord spoke with authority that Christians are entitled to be called Christians. They acknowledge Him to be the Christ and as such they accord to Him the submission of their intellect as well as of their heart. Their acquaintance with Him and His teaching is derived from the witness of the New Testament Scriptures. These they proceed upon as trustworthy documents and as they acquaint themselves with their teaching they subject heart and conscience and understanding to the truth that they open up. So in regard to what their Lord taught about the Scriptures of which Israel were the custodians they accept His words as regulative for their thought as surely as for their faith. This determines the outlook on the Old Testament Scriptures that is characteristic of historical Christianity.
From these same Scriptures of the New Testament which tell them what Christ taught they learn on an authority which they recognize as sufficient what the endowment was which He bestowed upon His chosen representatives as well as the claims that He put forth on behalf of His own authority. It is as a matter of fact the Christ Who makes these claims that historical Christendom recognizes as the supreme authority in the department of Faith and Life; and recognizing Him to be the Christ, the Great Prophet of the Church, Christians are willing to learn what He had to teach. So they submit themselves to the authority of the Gospels and as they find in those documents the message that He delivered they receive it as they receive Him Who delivered it.
Thus they learn not only what our Lord had to say in respect of Moses and the Prophets, but also what was peculiar to His own teaching as an opening up of what had found place in the Old Testament only in cryptic or initial form. The advance of revelation was like the path of the just which shines more and more unto the perfect day. The bud hides in its bosom what the warmth of the summer sun brings to light. The full flower shows more than did the bud. Yet all the beauty of the full-blown rose was hid in the bosom of the rosebud. So the early revelation was brought to maturity in the ministry of our Lord. He brought out to its full development what the former revelation held only in seed or in germ. The first grey streak that tells of the dawn and that heralds the day is followed by increasing light until the sun rises and the day has come. So was it with the progress of gracious revelation. It was given by steps and stages. But no new step that was taken set aside what had been already given. The first promise was followed by many more. The Books of the Law were followed by the Prophets and the Psalms, so that when our Lord came Israel had in their hands the whole canon of Old Testament Scripture. What that embosomed by way of prophecy and promise found its fulfillment in His person and coming and work. He opened up the true sense, so that what many prophets and righteous men desired to hear and heard not was made known to the generation of Israel which had the benefit and privilege of His ministry.
Now the writers of the Gospels set down as witnesses credible and trustworthy the teaching that He delivered. God who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke unto the fathers through the prophets spoke in the fullness of time through His Son. The message which He proclaimed His disciples received and the record of that message we have in the four Gospels which proceeded from the circle that had heard for themselves and had seen for themselves what the Son of God did and taught. If from the Gospels we see what the character of our Lord's ministry of teaching and working was we learn from them too what His followers experienced by way of training and equipment for the work that they were to do. They were to be His witnesses and that this might be the case they must be in a position to tell what they heard and saw for themselves. During His earthly ministry they were learners in their Lord's School. But they were learners who had very much to unlearn and in the account that they give of the process of their education they are wonderfully candid as they let us see their own mistakes and how backward they were in taking in the real meaning of their Lord's mission and work.
A competent witness, it has been said, needs three things, capacity, opportunity, and veracity. All these three met in the witnesses that our Lord chose to testify in regard to Himself. In respect of their capacity they were plain men of common sense who would never be challenged as witnesses in any case or court on the ground that they were deficient in ordinary understanding. The fact that they were so long in their Lord's company gave them the opportunity that was needed to fit them to be His witnesses. For in the years of their fellowship with Him as disciples they had every chance of seeing and of hearing for themselves. This fitted them to tell, as witnesses, of the facts about His works and His teaching both. The third requisite condition for a competent witness is to be found also in their case. They were men of character and on the score of veracity we cannot name any others whose word we should sooner take in regard to what had come within the sphere of their own cognisance.
With these three conditions meeting in them we should at once acknowledge how fit they were to fulfill the function of bearing witness to their Lord. When further we take note of the risk that they ran in bearing their witness and the many inducements that they had to be silent and not to provoke the anger of the men in power and yet they were not silent, this consideration shows how free they were from self-seeking in taking the course that they did. All ordinary prudential motives would tell in the direction of bidding them study their selfish interests and their ease. But in spite of this they could not hold their peace. In the face of persecution and danger and death they bore their witness. The facts that they attested we find on record and we may come in touch through the record of those facts in the Gospels with the Lord whom they learned to know, to follow and to serve.
The disciples who were thus meant to be witnesses and were trained for that work were meant also to be teachers. Now for their two-fold office of witnesses and teachers their Lord promised them that they should have special equipment. In the matter of the witness that they should bear to His Word He gave them the express promise that when they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost He would bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them and they should bear witness because they had been with Him from the beginning. Witness given under such special conditions should be the witness not only of the ordinary powers of human memory but also the witness of memory divinely reinforced. In that case their witness should be a positively trustworthy source of information in regard to what their Lord had done and taught. And such was the witness that was borne by the Apostles from the time that they received the endowment of Pentecost; and what held of their spoken word holds good of the permanent record of their ministry of witness as we have it in the four Gospels.
During the course of their Lord's ministry on earth His disciples made it quite obvious that they had much yet to learn that they might understand the teaching which they heard from Him. It was only by slow degrees that they were set free from the mistaken ideas that they had learned, from their childhood, to cherish in regard to the work of the Christ for whose coming their fathers had looked and in whose coming they themselves as disciples had learned to rejoice. So long as they were held in the grip of such prejudice they neither entered into their Lord's teaching as they should, nor were they in a position to teach their fellows the full truth that had fallen upon their ears. They were meant, however, to be teachers, and authoritative teachers, of the full Word of divine revelation. For this end they needed to have their understanding enlightened and their judgment cleared. Otherwise they could not be the authoritative expositors and preachers of a message which was to be proclaimed with great plainness of speech. If their hearers were to acquaint themselves with the fullness of Gospel truth it was plain that they as its teachers must know it for themselves. They must then be delivered from their mistaken thoughts of the truth made known by their Lord. They knew it as yet not as a whole but in parts. This knowledge was not enough to furnish them with equipment for their office. So their Lord's promise was given them that when the Spirit of truth that He promised them should come He would lead them into all the truth. So much they knew already. So much more they failed to do justice to, and so much also was not as yet disclosed to them. The full discovery had not been given them for they were not ripe yet for it. So their Lord told them that He had many things to say unto them which they could not yet bear. These things they were to come to know when they should be led into the full truth. Once this should happen they were no longer to be mere babes in this knowledge. They were to be led into it and when this should come about they would know it in its true setting and they would know its parts in their true relations to one another and in their proper proportions. Thus their judgment should be matured.
But our Lord's promises to the apostles went further. In them the Spirit of their Father was to speak even when they were only called upon to open their mouths in their own self-defence. If this was so might it not be reasoned a fortiori that the provision which should equip them for self-defence would assuredly be theirs when they spoke as the responsible and authoritative representatives of their Lord? We are not left to inference here or to our own reasonings from the fitness of things. So close was their relation to their Lord as His Apostles that those who should hear them should hear Him, and those who rejected them rejected Him. And again when we see the claims that an Apostle could make we learn what the endowment was that his brethren and he enjoyed for the discharge of the ministry of witness and teaching to which they were called.
In this connection it is of interest to take note of what the Apostle Paul has to say of himself and of his fellows. They spoke not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. Not only did they receive the Spirit who is from God that they might know the things which are freely given us from God. They were to speak these things in Spirit-given words. Thus he claimed that not only the substance of their teaching was of authority but also its form. In this we read the recognized fulfillment in the Apostles of the promise that had been given to them. Their hearers who heard to profit received from them the word of God, and in so doing treated it not as the word of man but as it was in truth the Word of God which worketh effectually in them that believe. And when Paul used his authority as an Apostle in laying down the law for those in the Church of Corinth who were prophets or spiritual he made it plain that they were called upon to recognize that the things which he wrote to them were indeed the commandments of the Lord.
What Paul thus claimed for his written word held good of the word of his brother Apostles. Thus also we find John saying: "He that is of God heareth us", while "he that is not of God heareth not us". And it was thus that men were to know the Spirit of truth from the spirit of error. The very touchstone that told the difference lay in this fact, that the final authority of the Apostles should be recognized.
Such is the position that historical believing Christianity takes up. It accords to the Apostles what they claim as their own; and it recognizes in their writings the permanent and final form of the revelation that the Son of God came to make. He gave so much of it in the course of His ministry on earth and this we have in abiding shape in the four Gospels. These are the records of what Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which He was taken up. With this record in our hands we may see what the Apostles saw and we may hear what they heard. We are as it were looking through their eyes and we are listening as it were with their ears. They have left us the record of what they heard and saw to serve as the ground of Faith. They thought their witness worthy of credit and that it was a sufficient basis for a faith to build upon which receives their Lord as the Christ, the Son of God. When they indicate the end for which they wrote they but put on record what their Lord meant them to do. He also meant that their word of witness should be enough for the faith of His people in all ages to build upon. Their ministry was derived from Him. He called them; He trained them; He sent them. The equipment that He promised them He bestowed upon them. Thus it came about that after He was taken up He fulfilled to them His promise and in their witness and in their teaching He Himself continued to bear witness and to teach. What He did in His earthly ministry He continued in His heavenly. As the result of this continued ministry He enabled His Apostles to fulfill their oral and their active ministry on earth and to leave an abiding heritage to those who should believe in Him through their word. This was nothing less than the prolongation of their ministry of witness and of teaching. Its concrete embodied form is the Scriptures of the New Testament.
We may be tempted to wish that we had lived in the days in which our Lord was to be seen and heard, or His Apostles bore first-hand witness in regard to Him. These were days which many prophets and righteous men desired to see yet saw not. They were great days indeed. We should not, however, forget that the word of the Apostles preserves to us their witness, and though curiosity might be gratified if we could be transported back to the time and land of the New Testament facts yet we should see nothing but what the Apostles tell us and we should hear from their living voice no other message than we have in their written word. We need not then envy them the privilege that was theirs. The same Jesus of Whom they speak and Whom they knew is before us that we may believe in Him and know Him as our own. The greatest good that the Apostles themselves got of the Gospel is the good that is common to all the children of the new birth. They knew their Lord, and that is the very life of the soul and it is our life that we should know Him. And we are not to give place to the thought that He has withheld from us the means of truly acquainting ourselves with Him. Such is the privilege that the New Testament Church enjoys to the ends of the earth and to the end of time, when she has those Scriptures which enshrine the ministry of our Lord, as a personal and direct ministry on earth, and as a real and abiding and authoritative ministry which is His as the risen and exalted Christ. He continued to work and to teach through His Apostles and the record of it all is ours that we may acquaint ourselves with Him, and through a living faith get the good of the Gospel of His Grace.
Now this record is as authoritative as the spoken word of the Twelve. It shares with their oral witness and teaching in the quality of final authority. This was theirs because their Lord spoke through them. They spoke in the words that the Holy Ghost enabled them to employ. They were inspired men and their message was an inspired message. God breathed on them and He breathed through them so that their word was His Word in very deed. They were equally inspired when they wrote as when they spoke, and the same theopneust character that attached to their spoken word belongs to their written word also. Such is the claim that they made for themselves; and that is the claim which their writings still make.
Their word as His Apostles was their Lord's word, and this is what is meant by the inspiration of the New Testament. From its pages we learn that our Lord and His Apostles too regarded the sacred deposit which was in the hands of Israel and which the New Testament Church as the legitimate successor to the Church of the Old Testament still holds in her hands as the Word of God given of old by Moses and the Prophets. It was not the word only of Moses or the word of Isaiah, or the word of David. It was their word indeed, for they spoke it and they wrote it. But the word of Moses was the Word of God. The word of Isaiah was the word of God. The word of David was the Word of God. So in the New Testament we have the Word of Paul and the Word of John and the Word of Luke. It was not only their Word, it was the Word of God. Now this brings before us the mysterious character of Holy Writ.