Inspiration According to Scripture

What comes to our mind when we think of the word INSPIRATION? For most people in the past few generations in America, the dominant meaning of the word has to do with a subjective motivation—whether toward some practical action, or even as a stirring of the aesthetic part of the mind in some art. The point is that it is something native to the person, and all it takes is a little bit of stirring from someone else’s words or example.  

The question that will keep us within the bounds of what inspiration must be is this:

Whether God is the efficient cause, and the human authors the instrumental cause, of the whole of Scripture, without the latter acting outside of the former, and without the former eradicating the latter.

Two Foundational Texts

There are two passages that I want to begin with. The first comes from 2 Timothy 3:16. The whole passage surrounding these words is relevant to the doctrine of Scripture; but the ones that concern us today are these: “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” The one word used by Paul that I really want to draw your attention to is the Greek word theopneustos, which in our English is rendered as either two words, one hyphenated word, or else a few words. But in Greek it is one, and it is a construct of the word for God (theos) and the word for either breath or wind or even spirit (pneuma). 

The first word is simple enough, being the word for God. The second word is voluminous throughout the pages of Scripture, usually in describing the agency of the Holy Spirit where the words for “breath” and “wind” are the same word as the word for “spirit.” This is the case for the Hebrew ruach as well as for the Greek word here, pneuma. It is no coincidence that the word pneumonia, which is an illness to do with breathing, comes from this. Yet when we think of inspiring—whether the literal or the figurative kind—we conceive it as a breathing in. Warfield sets his reader straight on this:

“The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a ‘spiring’ or a ‘spiration.’ What it 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. In a word, what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them.”1

R. C. Sproul even once said that perhaps a better term for inspiration would have been ex-piration—a breathing out rather than breathing in. Clearly he was leaning back on Warfield’s rationale when he made this point.

The second foundational passage in this respect is 2 Peter 1:20-21. Let’s read it first and make a few observations.

“knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

The first thing to resolve is whether the word ἐπιλύσεως ought to be rendered “interpretation” or “suggestion,” or something of that latter sort. One can see what is at stake. The emphasis is either on the way one reads the text (interpretation) after the event of its inspiration, or else on the way in which it was brought about in the first place. Now the root word is ἐπίλυσις, which can mean a “solution, explanation, interpretation,” or else a “release” in the causal sense. In other words, etymology itself cannot make the final decision. Fortunately the context makes things abundantly clear. The adjacent word ἰδίας, being in the genitive, has the possessive sense—“of its own”—that speaks of origin or cause, namely, of the prophetic writings themselves. And if we are still unsure, we have only to read the next words: “For no prophecy was ever produced,” or, to be woodenly literal, “was brought” (ἠνέχθη). In other words, the whole contrast is between where the prophecy did originate from and where it did not. 

Our second observation is a common one made about the Greek word which is rendered “being carried” (φερόμενοι), where the root φέρω means “bring” or “carry” or “drive.” It is observed that it is also used for a ship with its sails being driven along as in Acts 27:15, 17. Bavinck adds that, “where the word occurs outside the NT it always has a passive meaning.”2

Arriving at a Concept and Definition

Finally, we must put the efficient and instrumental causes together into one coherent picture. Even in the imagery of the wind carrying the sails, no part of the sails cause the wind and neither does the wind eradicate the sails. Just the opposite. The wind employs the sails. But the key with respect to causality is that the wind is wholly causal to the movement and efficacy of the sails. That is what the old thinkers meant by “efficient cause,” that is, the ultimate cause of a thing. So it is here that the Holy Spirit is the entire efficient cause of the truth communicated in every part of Scripture.

Calvin commented about those human instrumental causes, 

“He calls them the holy men of God, because they faithfully executed the office committed to them, having sustained the person of God in their ministrations. He says that they were — not that they were bereaved of mind, (as the Gentiles imagined their prophets to have been,) but because they dared not to announce anything of their own, and obediently followed the Spirit as their guide, who ruled in their mouth as in his own sanctuary.”3

Putting this information together, we can agree with the definition given by Warfield: “Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.”4 This is nothing short of divine efficient causality. Inspiration, rightly conceived, is not the mere “elevation” of the human faculties to a higher plane, nor any spiritual “suggestion” made by the divine to the human, where the latter is still taking any part in the efficient cause. 

The Whole Word as God Speaking

Another class of passages that should be considered are those that treat the Scriptures in a personified way, such as the two times in Galatians: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” (3:8) and “the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin” (3:22). Or where “the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up’” (Rom. 9:17). Then there are those places that simply call Scripture God’s word or speech or some equivalent. For instance where the revelation given to the Hebrews is called “the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2).

Having introduced how inspiration tells us the cause of Scripture, we must pay attention to the matter and the scope of what is inspired.

The complete picture of these three coming together has often gone under the name Verbal Plenary Inspiration. It must be stressed that this cannot be reduced to some “modern Evangelical view,” but has been held in substance throughout church history.

Sometimes the labels we give to ideas give opportunity for the enemies of truth to reduce the substance of an idea to the particulars of a label and the circumstances under which it arose. Make no mistake, the total concept is nothing more than a summary of the truths contained in those passages already introduced. 

As to the particular label, the word verbal simply draws attention to the word element. It is not simply that God has inspired those who have written but that He has inspired what they have written. It may seem like a very pedantic loophole to close up, but we will see why the point is so crucial. That second word removes all other escape routes to a lower view of Scripture. By plenary we mean a fullness, as in Paul’s referent for the word “all” in 2 Timothy 3:16 and Peter’s similarly categorical “no” in 2 Peter. 1:21.

It is all Scripture that has been breathed out by God, no exception. Every single written word, from cover to cover, comes from God.

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1. B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture (Louisville, KY: SBTS Press, 2014), 133.

2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I:425.

3. John Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:391 (CCEL)

4. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, 131.