The relationship between God and the human writers of Scripture is wholly different. In the first place, God did not find the human writers, as if they were created and developed apart from God, only to be discovered by him later, but he made them according to his own specifications. Commenting on a related subject, Geerhardus Vos writes, "The revelation does not spring from the character; on the contrary, the character is predetermined by the necessities of the revelation."¹⁸

Some theologians are fond of using "natural propagation" to explain human traits, including the universal sinfulness of man.¹⁹ However, natural propagation is at best relative – that is, it describes the relationship between past generations to the current one – it cannot function as the metaphysical explanation of the propagation of these traits, the relationship between God and human beings, or the relationship between God and human depravity.

Otherwise, Romans 9:21 could be referring to only Adam and Eve at best, but of course this is impossible – the immediate context as well as the entire Bible forbid such an interpretation, nor have I read anyone propose such nonsense. Those who make natural propagation into almost an absolute explanation of human traits seem to altogether ignore this verse and others like it, and given their theory, this is indeed what they would need to do. Also, this perspective has never been able to explain the origin of sin. Its proponents must relegate it to a complete mystery.

Rather, this verse as well as the entire Bible affirm God's direct and total control over the characteristics and destinies of all his human creatures.²⁰ And this is both the immediate and ultimate explanation for all human traits, and for the origination and the perpetuation of human depravity. As Luther writes, "the children of wrath" are "created such by God himself" after the pattern of Adam.²¹

Therefore, the various human characteristics exhibited in Scripture can never undermine its inspiration, for this variety is part of God's design. God did not dictate the Scripture using only one set of characteristics (personality, vocabulary, etc.), nor did he dictate it using a numerous sets of characteristics. Rather, if we wish to speak in terms of dictation, the whole creation is God's "dictation," including these human writers who exhibited different characteristics, since these characteristics themselves were "dictated" by God. He did not only dictate the words of the Bible, but he "dictated" the very people who spoke his words and held the pens to write them down. And he even "carried" them along as they did so.

This is why a theory of mere verbal dictation is far too weak to describe or explain biblical inspiration, since behind the production of Scripture is God's exhaustive and pervasive control over all of history and all of humanity, including the rise and fall of nations, every good deed, every evil thought, the course of every drop of rain, and the precise length and number of a person's hair. And even now he must sustain all things by his word (Hebrews 1:3).

What an insult, then, it would be to say that he dictated the words to the human writers, or that these human writers "actively cooperated" with God. No, God first "wrote" the prophets themselves and then "carried" them to write the Bible. He created, caused, and carried the men to write his words. No weaker description or explanation can do justice to the inspiration of the Bible.

To summarize our position on the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Edward Young is right when he says that the Bible is "not a magical book dropped down from heaven";²² however, the result is the same. The Bible that we have now is so absolutely infallible, inerrant, and authoritative that it is as if God had taken up a pen himself and written the whole book, and then dropped it down from heaven to us. But we have already made the strongest possible statement about this long before, that is, when we refer to the Bible in a personified sense, God and Scripture are interchangeable.

 

Notes

¹⁸ Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), p. 91.

¹⁹ For example, see William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (P & R Publishing, 2003).

²⁰ See Vincent Cheung, "More Than a Potter."

²¹ Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Fleming H. Revell, 1957), p. 314. Luther does not here address what caused Adam to commit the first sin, since he is discussing Ephesians 2:3 and not Adam, but he does assert that all of Adam's descendents are created as sinful by God. Lesser theologians prefer to hide behind "natural propagation" so that they can distance God from evil.

²² Young, Thy Word is Truth, p. 25.

(to be continued)

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