![]() This quality was the mark of their holiness and the guarantee of their supreme authority in the life of the church. In the New Testament, we find both-holy men were moved by the Spirit of God, but the texts they produced were also breathed out by him. Inspiration applied primarily to the people who composed literary works, and not to the works themselves. In ancient times it was commonly believed that poets were inspired by a muse or other genius, who gave them the superhuman talent they possessed. But it is also fair to say that traditionally orthodox Christians have always believed that the Bible is divinely inspired, and the unique place occupied by its text in Christian worship bears witness to that fact. ![]() Modern ControversyĪ great deal of controversy surrounds these terms, and it is fair to say that in the modern church, belief in what they represent is the hallmark of conservative, and usually evangelical, believers. This means that no truly “inerrant” text exists, but that does not necessarily imply that the copies we have are misleading and says nothing at all about whether they are inspired by God. Arguments of this kind make logical sense, but they come up against the obvious objections that we do not possess the original manuscripts and that all the copies we have contain errors of various kinds. To be truly infallible, however, it must not contain any errors, because even the smallest mistake might mislead people and cause them to err or (if they discovered the mistake) to doubt the truth of God’s Word. The general line of argument is that if the Bible is divinely inspired, it must also be infallible because God would not lead his people astray. The former term became current in the nineteenth century, when Protestants applied it to the Bible and Roman Catholics to the papacy, but “inerrancy” is of more recent origin. Infallibility and inerrancy are best viewed as logical deductions from the principle of divine inspiration. A great deal has been written about the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of Holy Scripture, though only the first of these terms is found in the Bible itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |