I’ve been talking about inspiration and canonization in several posts, and I’m finally ready to get down to talking about inspiration. First, I’d like to remind you of my existing essays on inspiration, Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, which goes into some detail on the topic of Biblical inspiration.
But now I want to look at what’s at the heart of divine inspiration. Then I’m going to follow with entries about various proposed tests for the validity of inspired writers and their value.
What do people generally mean when they say that something written is inspired by God? There are many different answers to this question. Some options are:
God gave the very words and letters of the work in question This would apply to the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone by God’s finger, to the Torah according to many Orthodox Jews, or to the entire Bible according to some conservative or fundamentalist Christians who believe in verbal dictation. Only those things God dictated would be regarded as inspired.
God impresses messages on the minds of certain people, who write those messages in their own words. Many conservative and moderate Christians hold a view like this. There is room for the personality of the prophet, and there is room for individual idiosyncrasies, but there must be a specific message sent by God.
People who experience God try to describe what they have experienced. This is a common liberal view of the inspiration of scripture. It is quite possible for there to be errors in scripture, but those who write do have a genuine experience of God. The validity of their descriptions may vary.
(I discuss more options in my essay noted above.)
There are different ways one can use to decide what inspiration means. All of these will be circular to some extent. For example, many people build their view of inspiration almost entirely from their understanding of the nature of God. God is all-knowing and truthful, so the Bible must be factually accurate and entirely truthful. This is the approach taken by those who believe in inerrancy. It has also been used in my experience by Muslims who have tried to persuade me that the Qur’an is the word of God. Others look heavily at human needs, and make the assumption that divine revelation would necessarily fill in what we don’t know and can’t know. There is a consistent assumption that God is intending to communicate knowledge to us, and specifically accurate knowledge.
In either case, these people will take either the first or second view that I present about inspiration. The process is primarily about conveying information and the primary question to be asked is whether the information conveyed is accurate and comprehensible. I think that their view works fairly well for books that at least appear to claim to come from God. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel claimed to be receiving messages from God and to write these messages. But what about other books? Luke claims to be writing the results of research. Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles appear to be history, and find their source in previously existing royal chronicles. Psalms contains prayers that are individual, and seem to express the heart cry of the individual psalmist.
I would argue instead for the third view. My problem is not that the other views are circular, and that my alternative is not. It is inevitable that when we talk about revelation, something revealed by God that we could not otherwise know, we’re going to get a bit circular. After all, how do we know it is God talking? If the information is readily available to us, we might as well look at a more natural source. If the information is not available to us, it’s impossible to check.
If you accept the third view, then the other books I have cited fall into place. There are many ways in which God speaks, many ways in which we can hear, and many ways in which we can express what we hear. The core, then, of an inspired writing is that the person doing the writing, or producing the information, has genuinely experienced God in some way. That experience may come through direct impression of messages from God in the mind, visions, dreams, guided study, or even guided experiencing of the world. The Biblical writer experiences God’s presence and writes it down.
Of course, this view continues to be circular. I don’t know, except through my community and others that I study, what divine presence is. I can read about what others claim it is. I can describe what I have experienced, but I cannot ultimate get outside it and test it. The only protection I have is that I operate in a community. But that, in itself, is a subject for a future essay.
I’m going to make this a short note, because what I suggest is that you read the two stories (and even search for other sources) on this story and consider the issues for yourself.
First, in the Washington Post: Military Wrestles With Disharmony Among Chaplains. According to this story there are definitely some issues to be dealt with. There are places in the military where it is appropriate for a chaplain to be sectarian and places where it is not. No final answer is given as to whether Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who is on a hunger strike, was actually justified in his actions or not. But the issues involved in the military are examined, as well as the nature of the chaplain’s work. I congratulate the post on a good story.
Now look at this response: Dont Ask, Dont Pray; Jesus Gets A Dishonorable Discharge. Jesus is being discharged from the military? Chaplains are no longer being allowed to mention the name of Jesus? All the subtleties are lost in an effort to make this into a divisive issue. The difficulties of those of other faiths are not the concern of the writer. Terms such as “weaker, more timd Christians” as opposed to “practicing Christians” (presumably those who agree with the author).
Well, perhaps I’m one of those weaker, more timid Christians, but I’m not going to be timid in saying that the kind of commentary being made by conservative Christians (and you can find plenty more such commentary on the internet with a simple search) is not well considered, is not appropriate, and is not a good representative of Jesus, my Lord and Savior. I especially dislike the statistical sleight of hand. We’re told that 85% of the country is Christian, which apparently is to justify support for Christian prayers in the military, following which we exclude the “timid Christians” who might not agree. Apparently I’m included in the group of real Christians when it’s convenient and excluded when not.
Christian chaplains can pray in Jesus name at appropriate, non-mandatory services. It’s not a problem. I strongly suspect that the reason President Bush has not taken action in this case is that the military is fully capable of investigating it, considering all the issues, and making a ruling. What is happening in the commentary is a simple case of grabbing the one, headline generating story of a hunger strike, and then assuming that the person who is yelling the name of Jesus the loudest must be in the right.
I rarely congratulate President Bush, but I can certainly commend him for letting the standard military process investigate and deal with this one. I hope he continues to have the courage to resist demagoguery like this.
It’s a new year. Resolutions have been made. Best wishes have been passed on to friends and loved ones. We even added in a leap second into last year to even out time very precisely.
We care quite a lot about time. We like to measure it carefully, divide it into various bits and pieces, celebrate or mourn its passing, and discuss and criticize the way we use it. All in all, time is very important to the way we live in the year 2006 in America.
I am pretty time conscious. I have generally worn a watch, and I sometimes make people nervous by looking at it as a conversation goes by. They think I’m in a hurry or have an appointment somewhere, or that I’m bored and would like to see the present activity end. A few months ago, the battery ran out and I decided to try not wearing a watch. You might think this was a tremendous hardship, but I’m normally in front of my computer, which has a clock displayed, or I’m in the car, which has a clock. In the house, there are clocks in every room. I can’t recall more than once or twice in the last several months when I’ve had to ask someone to look at their watch for me.
Last night I attended a watch night service at my church (Gonzalez United Methodist Church). It started at 11 PM, and was to go until just after midnight. I wasn’t wearing a watch, as has become my habit. I was able to enjoy the service thoroughly, and then when the leader put on a CD of a bell choir over the church speakers, and told us it was now 2006, I was able to be in the moment, be surprised by it. But it didn’t take up my time before it got there. During that time I was able to think about the time of praise, prayer, and meditation that had been planned.
As I was thinking about this post, I was reminded of a passage of scripture. As often happens to me, I remembered the scripture as I’d memorized it in the King James Version as a child: “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). It might be better translated as “Make good use of every day, because these are bad times.”
How are we to make good use of every day?
Paul has some suggestions. In the verse before, he says not to be unwise, but to be wise. Sounds like a good idea. Some of my Spirit-led friends seem to think that being Spirit-led and applying wisdom are contradictory. “Don’t think about what you’re doing,” they say, “just go with the flow of the Spirit!” And that idea has some merit to it. We can kill things just by thinking them to death.
But at the same time thinking about how we use our time is not contradictory to knowing God’s will. In the verse following, verse 17, Paul says, “Because of this don’t be foolish, but understand what God’s will is.” Wisdom and thinking in the use of our time is important, and is one of the ways we know God’s will.
I think that in order to really “redeem the time” we need to get both elements involved. Both the open, free, unfettered leading of the Spirit, including our dreaming, visioning, imagining, and even resting, and at the same time our understanding and wisdom.
Let me illustrate with two roles I play–writer and editor. These are hard to combine. You’ll find errors in many of these posts, because I don’t have someone else to proof-read them. Writing requires that free flow, quantity production, that gets words and hopefully thoughts on paper. If I spend too much time thinking about each word and about the whole document I’m trying to produce, I will produce a stilted and boring manuscript.
When I edit, I have to change modes. (This is very difficult to do with your own work!) I look at each word asking whether it is accomplishing what it is supposed to accomplish. Is it necessary? Is it sufficient? The results of the free-flow of my imagination may be curtailed by an editorial hand, and usually will be better for that change.
Balancing these out can be an interesting exercise. But to “redeem the time” we need to do both. In our lives, we need to have vision, dreams, and imagination. We need to have rest and relaxation. We also need to have boundaries, goals, schedules, and other means of dividing our time into manageable portions.
Think about your life this new year’s day. Are you overbalanced in either direction? What would make your life better, more fulfilling, more in line with God’s will? Consider altering the balance a bit one way or the other.
Note: I wrote this for my wife’s devotional list for today’s (12/30/05) entry. Jody puts out an e-mail devotional every weekday, and has also created a collection for her book, Daily Devotions of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God. I’ve included an ad (Amazon.com) for the book and a link to subscribe to the e-mail list. We probably only cross over between my blog and her list a half dozen times each year because they have a different flavor and purpose.
5What is mankind that you remember them?
Or human beings that you pay attention to them? 6But you made them a little lower than God,
And crowned them with glory and honor. 7You made them rule over the works of your hands.
You put everything under their feet. — Psalm 8:5-7 (TFBV)
4Now when the time was fully right, God sent his son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5So he could ransom those who were under the law so they could be adopted as children. 6Now because you are children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts with the cry, “Abba, Father!” 7So that you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if you are a child, you are also an heir through God. — Galatians 4:4-7 (TFBV)
Its coming up on New Years Day, and many of us will be making some resolutions. Some of those will mean a change in our lives. Others will be forgotten within days, or perhaps even within hours. I think the practice of making resolutions is, on balance, a good one. Times of commemoration and renewal are good for us, though it might be better if we had them more often, and were more careful to remember them between.
But the question I want to suggest to you in this last devotional before New Years is this: What kind of resolution is appropriate to a child of the king?
While youre thinking about that, consider something else. Tonight, my wife and I were watching Criminal Minds
I’m back to thinking about inspiration today. Many people think about the terms “inspired” and “canonical” as nearly synonymous. Generally they are not.
The term “canon” relates to idea of canon law, in other words a book is canonical when canon laws defines it as authoritative. Now the edges have become blurred over the years, and we have many different churches, but in general you will still find a statement in any church’s statement of beliefs that designates certain books of the Bible as canonical. For protestant churches, this is almost always the 66 books that have been accepted as canonical since the protestant reformation. The Roman Catholic Church, various eastern Orthodox churches and some smaller bodies have a different list of books.
The books listed as canonical are generally assumed to be inspired, and thus to carry divine authority. But the act of making certain books canonical does not necessarily make them the only books that are inspired by God. Other works may be inspired. A person may regard other works as authoritative.
This brings up the concept of a “personal canon.” In one sense, that is a contradiction in terms, since “canon” by nature involves a community to which the standard applies, and not an individual. But as used, it simply means those books that a particular individual regards as authoritative in some way. Alternatively, some people use that term to designate the list of those books they regard as inspired. I prefer not to use that second sense, because it reinforces the notion that “canonical” and “inspired” are synonyms.
So how does an organization establish a canon? That would depend on the organization. In the case of early Christianity I would suggest that it was in many ways a contest of popularity, with the proviso that I’m referring to popularity in use as an authority on doctrine or practice. By the time the church councils got together to make authoritative lists, there was really very little wiggle room. By virtue of the earlier victory of what we now call “orthodox” doctrine, and the fact that generally orthodox bishops and officials attended the councils, we get a canon that was acceptable to orthodox churches.
I don’t have a problem with the procedure. In effect, I think that popularity must be a primary consideration. It would be hard to force a community to accept material that they truly did not like as authoritative. But this does relate directly to the idea of inspiration. Very frequently a community later accepts as authoritative someone who was not popular in his own time. Jeremiah is an excellent example. He was persecuted when he spoke, his work was cut up when he wrote, and he ended up forcibly taken to Egypt against his will. But his book later became an authoritative part of scripture.
This leads me to point out almost a contradiction between immediate inspiration and immediate relevance of a message and its acceptance as canonical. Some of the most inspired and challenging statements that have ever been made have been given to communities that really didn’t like them at all. I suspect that in most times the message of a true prophet will not be well received. A message may receive very mixed reception. Gandhi was poorly received by the British occupiers and by those who wanted to turn to violence. Others received his work joyfully. Inherent in the way he inspired people to action was the fact that he angered other people.
My point is that simply asking whether a work is canonical or not is not a very good way to determine its value to your own spiritual life. Most of the material we now have in the Bible and which are regarded by all Christian churches as authoritative, was once poorly received by at least a part of the community. The things that truly correct us and call us to greater action are likely to be frowned upon by those who need them most.
What a defined canon does for us is tell us what defines our community. It does not define the boundaries of what helps us grow spiritually.
I’ve been doing some discussion of the prophecies of the book of Daniel recently on the Compuserve Christian Fellowship Forum. The discussion there is about the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgment and the time prophecy of Daniel 8:14. But that is not what this post is about.
As I reviewed the many related prophecies about the time of the end, I couldn’t help but see the strong emphasis on one source of hope–the writers of Daniel and Revelation held up for themselves and their readers the hope that God was going to intervene and that everything was going to turn out all right. This kind of thinking is often described with the term “eschatological” which simply means that it has to do with the end of all things. In particular, eschatological thinking, speaking, and writing in theology refers to the notion that things will not end naturally as they run down due to the normal course of nature, but that there will come a point when things appear utterly hopeless, but at that point God will intervene and things will change.
For many Christians today, guided by the book and movie series Left Behind, this type of eschatological view is pretty much the only view. It is so pervasive that few understand that there are any alternatives. Now my topic is not these alternatives, but in order to understand what I’m about to say, you will probably need to realize that there are such alternatives. Many Christians believe that the kingdom of God will grow in the world and that the end comes by the victory of God in the world by means of the people of God. Even though this does deal with what might be called “end times” it is not generally thought of as eschatological thinking, because evil disappears slowly, forced out by the good, rather than suddenly at the other end of a major battle.
Often these kinds of thinking are contrasted. One either holds that the good of the kingdom is to be accomplished now, by us doing our duty in the world, loving our neighbors, and being witnesses. The kingdom of God, in this case, functions like seed, and grows like a plant, slowly displacing the wrong. On the other hand, eschatological thinking is supposed to take us away from the things of this world to a place where we spend our time thinking entirely of heavenly things, and looking for the count of souls that we have won, so that when God does intervene, the largest possible number will get taken to heaven.
Scholars in the search for the historical Jesus tend to see Jesus as either eschatological, based on Mark 13/Matthew 24/Luke 21, or they may see him as a wisdom teacher based on the many parables of the kingdom. If the kingdom grows like yeast (Matthew 13:33), then it’s sort of the non-eschatological view; if it comes violently, the eschatological.
And there is, of course, a substantial difference between the two views. One has the world getting very bad, and then being rescued. The other has the world slowly getting better.
But there are two similarities that I have noticed right away between the two views:
Hope Both views emphasize hope, even certainty of a good final conclusion.
Endurance Both views call for current good, kingdom building behavior, though for different reasons.
What does this mean to individual Christians? It means simply that no matter what view we take of the end, whether we are premillenial, postmillenial, or amillenial, or whatever prefixes we add to the word “tribulation,” we all have the same requirements on us now. Those requirements are stated in the two great commandments to love God and love our neighbor, and in the gospel commission to be a witness.
I think that the problem frequently is in what we believe “witness” means. The eschatological view often seems to make people think that their form of witness must be to vigorously force people onto the list of those headed for heaven. The non-eschatological view tends to emphasize how we change people’s behavior here and now. But the Biblical view, even in the eschatological books, is that our primary witness is in our living a kingdom type of life here and now. Read Daniel 1 and 6, for example, to see the type of action that this definitely eschatological book is calling for.
The bottom line here is that as Christians we have hope. However it is accomplished, good is going to win. And no matter whether we believe God will intervene in a spectactular manner, or if we believe the kingdom wins by slowly growing and displacing people, our task as Christians is the same–be the body of Christ for the world.
There are quite a substantial number of theories about how God inspires people to write his message. Several people have suggested recently that I collect some of my own essays in order to provide a coherent discussion, not just about the results of inspiration, but also the process. I don’t think I’ve written enough about that. (For those who are interested in my prior material, Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, and my shorted, more edited items, The Authority of the Bible, and What is the Word of God?)
Before I go on, though, I must note that this essay is about looking at inspiration after you believe that a particular work, in this case the Bible, is inspired. There is nothing obvious about this conclusion, and I intend to write some more about why one might regard a particular work as inspired.
Typically, Christians have found proof texts in scriptures that make comments about inspiration. “All scripture is inspired (or God-breathed) . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). “No prophecy of the scripture came by human will . . .” (2 Peter 1:21). These texts are not only used to prove the inspiration of scriptures, ignoring the circularity of using a Bible verse to prove that the Bible is inspired, but they also provide the foundation for an understanding of how inspiration worked. (Again, I’ll go into that issue in another post. Right now I’m working at a point after one has jumped into the circle and concluded that the Bible is inpired in some way.) I most commonly hear 2 Timothy 3:16 quoted in this connection. I ask someone what inspiration means. “All scripture is God-breathed,” comes back the answer. “God-breathed” is supposed to be obvious, but somehow the passage doesn’t enlighten us as to what God breathes and how. Another answer, that prophets speak as they are carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), doesn’t really answer the question either.
The process of inspiration is important not only in terms of how we understand God to behave in connection with people, but also in telling us what we would expect to result. For example, those who believes that God dictates the precise words that a prophet or other inspired writer puts on paper must in turn believe that those words, and not just the message they express, are important, and that they must always be the best words for the purpose. On the other hand, someone who believes that people receive impressions from God and then express them in human words will place a greater emphasis on the human side of the equation. The message is important, and it may be illuminated by knowing the person who speaks along with his or her cultural background and spiritual experience.
As the author of Hebrews expressed it:
1In old times God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets in many portions and in different ways. 2In these last days, however, he has spoken to us through a Son, one whom he has made heir of everything, and through whom also he created the universe. 3This Son is the brightness of his glory and the exact representation of his real essence. He sustains everything by his powerful word. He performed a cleansing from sins and sat down at the right hand of majesty in the {spiritual/heavenly} heights.
— Hebrews 1:1-3
God’s message came at different times and in different ways, a process that the author of Hebrews states culminated in God’s message coming through a person, Jesus. In Hebrews 4:12 he continues by calling the Word “alive and active” again referring to the Word of God as portrayed in Jesus. Those who place a heavy emphasis on the words, rather than the message, should give serious consideration to the view of revelation expressed in the book of Hebrews. According to this one scriptural author, whom most scholars leave unidentified, inspiration doesn’t always work the same way.
I would suggest that instead of looking for statements about how inspiration works in the scriptures, we should look at the scriptures themselves. There is no good reason to assume that those who experienced inspiration would also feel it necessary to define it. In fact, when we look at the scriptures we see no real effort to provide us with a theory of inspiration. There were simply people who claimed that they had a message from God, and they expressed it with some force under their various circumstances.
It doesn’t seem that in many cases we have words dictated by God. Other than Moses bringing the tablets of the law from Mt. Sinai, we don’t seem to have material actually written by God. Moses himself has various scribes chronicle the activities of the Israelites as they travel through the wilderness (Genesis 17:14, for example). This would appear contradictory to the notion that Moses himself wrote the Pentateuch, or that it was delivered as a whole by God to Moses. What need of scribes to record the details if God had provided the words already?
Elsewhere in scripture we have communication given through dreams, visions, direct prophetic oracles, and research. The books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles make reference to previously existing sources. Luke, in his gospel, makes a point of the research that he provided. John the revelator seems to have concocted a special form of Greek, unless one assumes he simply made an exceptional number of grammar errors, in writing the book of Revelation. I would suggest it is because he is so excited in the emotional state that results from receiving the vision, and that he struggles with words as he tries to describe what he has experienced. This seems far from verbal dictation.
We have prayers and stories that seem to express ungodly views (Psalm 137:8-9 and Judges 4-5, for example). We have variations in similar stories that can be observed by comparing Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, or the four gospels in many cases. Clearly there is something more than verbal dictation going on here. In fact, there seem to be quite a number of “somethings” going on.
If you accept the Bible as your sacred book, you will likely also have to come to the conclusion that God has spoken in times past in very many different portions and in very many different ways.
(In my next few posts I will be connecting this idea with the incarnation as I discussed it in my pre-Christmas posts, the basic issue of what literature is inspired, and the idea of a Biblical canon. Who decides what is authoritative and in what way?)
Typically we talk about salvation around Good Friday and easter. We are saved by his death and his return to life. And there is certainly something to be said for that. But this constant focus on the sacrifice of Jesus being largely in his death sometimes obscures other meanings that the Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have for us. I’ve recently seen some folks argue that the death wasn’t a sacrifice, because he came back to life, while Christians responded, “But it was a sacrifice! It was! It was!”
But the sacrifice of Jesus was not solely in his death. It was in his birth, his life, his death, and finally in his resurrection. In my book, Not Ashamed of the Gospel before the chapter titled “I Am Not Ashamed” (p. 17), I include this quote, in my own translation:
Though he was in the divine form,
He did cling to his equality with God,
But he emptied himself,
Taking the form of a slave,
Becoming human in form,
And being found in human pattern,
He became obedient to death,
Even death on a cross,
So God has exalted him,
And given him a name above all names,
So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow
Heavenly, earthly and beneath the earth,
And every tongue should confess
That Jesus Christ is Lord
To the glory of the Father
