B. B. Warfield on why the Bible is not the 'inspired' Word of God

Evangelicals often refer to the Bible as the "inspired Word of God". The "inspired" bit is derived from the AV translation of 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God". The same wording us used in the NKJV. But the translation is inaccurate and misleading. As B. B. Warfield points out in his essay The Biblical Idea of Inspiration, the word rendered "inspiration", (theopneustos in the Greek) does not in fact mean that Scripture was inspired by God.

"The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of "spiring" or "spiration". What is says of Scripture is, not that it is "breathed into by God" or is the product of the Divine "inbreathing" into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, "God-breathed", the product of the creative breath of God.... When Paul declares, then, that "every scripture", or "all scripture" is the product of the Divine breath, "is God-breathed", he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically Divine operation." (The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, P&R, p. 133).

For this reason A. T. B. McGowan proposes that we speak of the "divine spiration" rather than the inspiration of Scripture. (The Divine Spiration of Scripture: Challenging evangelical perspectives, 2007, IVP/Apollos - see review article here). I agree that "spiration" is a more appropriate designation of Scripture than "inspiration". Also "inspired" is often taken to mean a work of genius such as in Shakespeare's "inspired" play, Hamlet. Scripture is far more than a literary classic. It is God's own Spirit-given Word. But "spiration" it is a slightly unwieldy term and I can't see catching on outside the world of academic theology. Better I think to say with the NIV and that all Scripture is "God-breathed" or "breathed out by God", ESV.

Some preachers are in the habit of introducing the reading of Scripture in public worship by saying, "This is the inspired Word of God". If we are going to use such a formula, far better to say, "This is the Word that God has breathed out".

Bavinck on God's Word in Servant Form

I've been reading the relevant chapters of Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1 in preparation for paper on inerrancy. (You can see an earlier version of it here). It is sometimes suggested that the Dutch theologian's emphasis on the servant form on biblical revelation meant that he had problems with inerrancy. Judge for yourself whether this is the case:

"The incarnation of Christ demands that we trace it down into the depths of its humiliation, in all its weakness and contempt. The recording of the word, of revelation, invites us to recognise that dimension of weakness and lowliness, the servant form, also in Scripture. But just as Christ's human nature, however weak and lowly, remained free from sin, so also Scripture is is 'conceived without defect or stain'; totally human in all its parts but also totally divine in all its parts." (Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1, Baker Academic, 2003, p. 435).

Unlike Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, Bavinck did not reflect at length on the integrity and purity of Scripture. He regarded such matters as the domain of biblical scholars rather than dogmaticians. His treatment of the attributes of Scripture is limited to the authority, necessity, sufficiency and perspicuity of the Bible. The main opponent for Princeton theologians was sceptical liberalism, which is why they concentrated their firepower on inerrancy. In discussing the attributes of Scripture, Bavinck has Roman Catholicism in his sights, hence the difference of emphasis.

Jesus wept

"He groaned in in spirit and was troubled...Jesus wept." (John 11:33 & 35)

It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death him who has the power of death, and whom he has come into the world to destroy, the devil. Tears of sympathy may fill his eyes, but this is incidental. His soul is held by rage: and he advances to the tomb, in Calvin's words, "as a champion who prepares for conflict." The raising of Lazarus thus becomes not an isolated marvel, but - as indeed it is presented throughout the whole narrative (compare especially, verses 24-26) - a decisive instance and open symbol of Jesus' conquest of death and hell. What John does for us in this particular statement is to uncover to us the heart of Jesus, as he wins for us our salvation. Not in cold unconcern, but in flaming wrath against the foe, Jesus smites on our behalf. He has saved us from the evils which oppress us; he has felt for and with us in our oppression, and under the impulse of these feeling has wrought out our redemption.

B. B. Warfield, The Emotional Life of our Lord, p. 177, in The Person and Work of Christ, P&R

Who is he that stands and weeps
at the grave where Lazarus sleeps?

'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'tis the Lord, the King of glory!
at his feet we humbly fall;
crown him, crown him Lord of all!

Benjamin Russell Hanby (1833-67

John Calvin on the Trinity

John Calvin

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote with deep insight into the doctrine of the Trinity. He dismissed as "an absurd fiction" (I:XIII:29) the scholastic teaching on the eternal generation of the Son. To him, the idea that the Father eternally generated the Son's divine essence was the wost kind of theological speculation. Instead, he proposed that "the Godhead is absolutely of itself [autotheos]. And hence also we hold that the Son, regarded as God, without reference to his person, is also of himself [autotheos]; though we also say that, regarded as Son, he is of the Father. Thus his essence is without beginning, while his person has its beginning in God". (I:XIII:25). The Son, in his divine essence is I AM, the self-existing God. He does not derive his deity from the Father. He is Son because he has a Father, but he is God because he is God.

B. B. Warfield spelt out the value of Calvin's contribution to our understanding of the Trinity in a remarkable and influential essay. Much recent evangelical work on the Trinity owes a debt to Warefield's exposition of Calvin's teaching.

"In his assertion of the autotheos of the Son Calvin, then, was so far from supposing that he was enunciating a novelty that he was able to quote the Nicene Fathers themselves as asserting it "in so many words". And yet in his assertion of it he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Not that men had not before believed in the self-existence of the Son as He is God: but that the current modes of stating the doctrine of the Trinity left a door for the entrance of defective modes of conceiving the deity of the Son, to close which there was needed some such sharp assertion of His absolute deity as was supplied by the assertion of His autotheos. If we will glance over the history of the efforts of the Church to work out for itself an acceptable statement of the great mystery of the Trinity, we shall perceive that is is dominated from the beginning to the end by a single motive - to do full justice to the absolute deity of Christ. And we shall perceive that among the multitudes of great thinkers who under the pressure of this motive have laboured upon the problem, and to whom the Church looks back with gratitude for great services, in better formulation of the doctrine or better commendation of it to the people, three names stand out in high relief, as marking epochs in the advance towards the end in view. These three names are those of Tertullian, Augustine and Calvin. It is into this narrow circle of elect spirits that Calvin enters by the contribution he made to the right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. That contribution is summed up in his clear, firm and unwavering assertion of the autotheos on the Son. By this assertion the homoousios of the Nicene Fathers at last came into its full right, and became in its fullest sense the hinge of the doctrine".

B. B. Warfield

From Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity, in Calvin and Augustine. p. 283 & 284, (P&R, 1980).

The impassioned God of B. B. Warfield

B. B. Warfield

Over at Helm's Deep, Paul Helm discusses Warfield on divine passion. The great Princetonian is often dismissed as a ploddingly conservative and unoriginal theologian. But Helm draws on his insights into the emotional life of Christ to propose a new way of understanding the impassibility of God. See here for this stimulating article.