![]() In other words, in order for us to understand the complexity of His being, God spoke through multiple people - all with different perspectives.Īs humans, our language contributes a vital piece to our community. We convey a wide variety of content in different tones, emotions and perspectives. “Because the writers are diverse in their language, style, culture, education, interests, and abilities, God speaks through them multiperspectivally, to give us many different aspects of the truth” (Grudem, pg. Theologians of church history have referred to this as organic inspiration and to them, these differences across the human writers are not walls for God to break down, but instead, different perspectives by which He brings us His Word. God chose to use (inspire) authors with all kinds of differences. ![]() ![]() We should take great joy in the fact that God chose to lower Himself and communicate to us in a way that we could actually understand and respond by the Holy Spirit’s prompting. In other words, there is a limited human element to the Scriptures. So what does this mean? God chose to lower Himself and communicate to us in a way that we could actually understand. ![]() Pastor and theologian, Wayne Grudem, adds in his Systematic Theology that inspiration or dictation, “does not completely deny human volition or personality in the writing of Scripture, but rather to say that the ultimate source of every prophecy was never a man’s decision about what he wanted to write, but rather the Holy Spirit’s action in the prophet’s life, carried out in various ways” (Grudem, pg. In their writing, their individual human qualities appear vividly but, all of these very different writers were chosen by God to convey His personal word to the world” (Frame, pg. Whether pencils or instruments, “God appointed the biblical writers to be prophets, apostles, or associates of the apostles. Others have given analogies such as this one from Athenagoras, a 2nd century church father: “God is like the flute player, and the prophets were like flutes.” Some (like John Calvin) have chosen to think of it like a boss giving “dictation” to his secretary. Many theologians and pastors throughout church history have considered this. Now I know what you’re thinking if this is true, and God is truly the author of all of Scripture, then why did God use humans? Doesn’t this compromise the trustworthiness of the scriptures? They all agree that to breathe out words is to speak them so, when we read 2 Timothy 3:16 we know that Inspiration means that God takes the language of human beings and makes it His own, through a beautiful mingling of a Divine and human Word, which is what we have today in our Bible. Theologians have pondered this meaning for centuries. In Greek (Gk) the word translated “inspired” is theopneustos (θεόπνευστος) and it only appears once in the entire English translation of scripture. We believe that the Scriptures are the very Word of God, breathed out or spoken through the writings of the prophets, scribes and other authors carried along by the Holy Spirit for His Divine Will (2 Timothy 3:16-17 2 Peter 1:19-21).Ģ Timothy 3:16 gives us the phrase breathed out, which is where the word inspired comes from. (See Psalm 19:7–8 Psalm 119:89 2 Timothy 3:16-17 2 Peter 1:19-21) If this is true, and God is truly the author of all of Scripture, then why did God use humans? Why do we do this? We believe that all of Scripture is inspired, true, authoritative and sufficient. ![]() God did not communicate to us without humans, and humans cannot communicate God's words without God's inspiration.Īt Hill City we teach from the Bible every Sunday and encourage individuals and families to open, pray through, and meditate on the scriptures. One hand does not exist without the other. ![]()
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