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Claim ID: BIB-IS11

Claim: Inspiration of God's Revealed Word

Summary: God not only revealed himself to everyone through His created world, but also revealed himself in human words. This process of divine inspiration is affirmed by testimony from the writers of scripture and Jesus. The overarching storyline of the Bible is remarkable singular and invariant even though it is composed of 66 books and written 40 writers over the course of 1,500 years. This demands that there is a single author, namely God.

Description: Christians claims that the Bible is set apart from all other sacred texts as being inspired by God. How can we know if the Bible writers were truly inspired by God? What evidence is there to support this claim?

God not only wants to reveal himself to everyone through His created world [BIB-IS10], he also wants to make himself known in human words. Another way to understand God's revelation is that God himself inspired the writers of the Bible. Essentially, the Spirit of God moved men to write God-breathed words.

In the process of inspiration, God does not just act, and humans respond with their own insight and judgment. Rather, God is working by the Holy Spirit to superintend (oversee, watch, direct). When we use the word inspiration in theology, we carefully define it. It is the process of God speaking, and humans receiving and writing down what he said. God wants to speak to us in human words that we can understand. Both the writings and writers were inspired.

The primary elements of inspiration as defined by Geisler and Nix [REF-GEI03] include: God's causality, prophetic agency, and divine authority. God initiates the process of inspiration by speaking to and through men of God. He communicates to men through the use of human senses (audibly, visually) and through a process of illumination and enablement. He makes his truth known and then employs the writer's individual personality to convey his message by guiding the writer's thoughts and choice of words. The resulting text carries the full weight and authority of God himself because God is the originator and conveyor of message.

This process of inspiration is affirmed by the following is evidence:

• Writers Affirm of Inspiration of Scripture
  The writers of scripture claimed to be inspired by God [BIB-EV94]. Paul states that all scripture is breathed by God's Spirit, and Peter states that the writers of scripture were carried along by God's Spirit. It is clear from these testimonies that God's Spirit illuminated and guided each writer to accurately convey God's original message.
• Jesus Affirms of Inspiration of Scripture
  Throughout Jesus ministry he declares the scriptures to be authoritative, eternal, immutable, inerrant, supreme and prophetically accurate [BIB-EV95]. Because Jesus is God [PHY-DS06], he is able to claim with authority that the scriptures are divinely inspired.
• Biblical Meta-Narrative Demonstrates the Inspiration of Scripture
  The overarching storyline of the Bible is remarkable singular and invariant even though it's composed of 66 books and written by 40 men over the course of 1,500 years [BIB-EV77].
• Accurate Fulfillment of Prophecy Demonstrates the Inspiration of Scripture
  Many of the 1,000+ prophecies have been fulfilled in the New Testament at the first coming of Jesus. With prophecy prediction-to-fulfillment spanning hundreds and even thousands of years, one must conclude that only God would be capable of predicting these events with pin-point accuracy. Therefore, God must have inspired biblical prophecy.

We conclude that God inspired the writing of scripture, not man. The continuity of scripture and prophetic accuracy demands one author, God himself.

Resources:

• From God to Us (REF-GEI03)