Writing about Session: 6 Inspiration, Gary Presnall shares his thoughts on the inspiration of Scripture.
The lesson for session 6 of my theology class I am taking was Inspiration of scripture. The key points that had an impact on me in the lesson were that there is only one interpretation of scripture, but many applications. I was always under the impression there were many interpretations and many applications.
I appreciated how God reveals Himself to us in different ways, and knowing how He does that. The ways He does that is by illumination, inspiration, and revelation. Illumination meaning God has to step in and help enlighten people and help them understand why His Word is true, relevant, and active working in people’s lives. It’s also objective in nature.
Inspiration is God guiding people to write Scripture and giving them the words to write without bypassing who and what they were, fully utilizing their personalities and experiences. In the Old Testament they were called Prophets.
Revelation is where God reveals His Truth to us through Scripture and through nature and our conscience.
There are many theories on how Scripture was inspired. I guess what stuck out are the more disturbing theories. One is the Degree Theory of Inspiration. It is a belief that some of the parts of the Bible are more inspired than other parts, thus we get half truths. In my opinion, it’s either all true or none of it is true; it’s one or the other.
The other theory that’s disturbing is the Mechanical Theory. The definition is God used the hand of man to passively write His Word. Its 100% God and man had no part. Its treated here as a magic book, that the prophets were like puppets. It is taught by Muslims the Koran was written this way as well as the Mormons believing their book of Mormon was dictated.
This was a great lesson. I totally believe in the theory of Verbal Plenary Inspiration and that all of Scripture is inspired by God. 100% God and 100% man, written down by man without error.
Gary Presnall