04.02. Question of Inspiration Re-opened

2. THE QUESTION OF INSPIRATION RE-OPENED BY HIGHER CRITICS

Within the memory of old men now living, the question of the inspiration of the Scriptures, which had been settled eighteen hundred years, has been re-opened and the agitation on the subject has surpassed anything in the history of religion. Its expressions are found in newspaper and magazine articles and tracts, and for the first time in the history of the subject of the inspiration of the Bible, it has reached the common people.

There is not a church in the United States but has members in whose minds the question of inspiration of the Scriptures has been raised. For the first time in the history of the discussion the attack comes from the inside. Heretofore the heathen in their lands and the infidel in Christian countries have been the ones to assail the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures. This time it comes from the pulpit, the religious commentary and the professors in Christian schools. The result has been that distrust upon the subject of the inspiration of the Bible is more widespread just now than it ever has been in the history of the world.

It becomes us to inquire the origin and cause of this reopening of this question in modem times. It has been a radical mistake to attribute this re-opening and agitation to the progress of modem science. I know that this is what they say-that it is caused by the amazing developments of modern science. Not a word of it is true.

It would be impossible for the question of inspiration to come before science, since science has nothing in the world to do with such a question, and cannot have in the nature of the case. Hence science can have nothing to say about the ultimate origin and destiny of things and beings. It cannot sit as a judge or as a jury upon questions of the supernatural. It can only discuss the natural, not the supernatural. There need never be any apprehension that any matter that touches the supernatural shall ever be challenged to stand before the bar of science and be subject to its verdicts.

While science has not re-opened this question, the disturber is speculative philosophy, which is quite a different thing from science, and there is nothing in speculative philosophy to qualify it to pass judgment in such a matter.

We might ask what has speculative philosophy ever achieved in the realm of the supernatural, where are all questions of Deity and ultimate origin and destiny and inspiration and miracles, in order to justify its assumption to be arbiter of this question? Can any man show that speculative philosophy has ever devised a standard acceptable to any two of its advocates by which matters in the realm of the supernatural might assuredly be known, weighed or measured? Has it ever or can it ever, in the nature of the case, go into an unverified and unverifiable hypothesis with reference to supernatural matters? Does not the history of human philosophy show that even in accounting for natural things its most assured conclusions at any one period of the world are like shifting sand-dunes in a desert, changing their form and locality with every contrary wind? What it is today it was not yesterday, nor will it be tomorrow. And if it be so unstable and valueless in the realm of natural things, how can it call for us to lift up our hats to it in the alien realm of the supernatural? How can the finite assume by natural reason to comprehend the infinite? The case is fairly stated thus, by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:19 :

“It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning will I bring to naught. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe.” In other words, human philosophy, in the nature of the case, can never by searching find out God or things that relate to God and the supernatural.

I declare with all emphasis that if all of the literature of human philosophy on supernatural matters from the time of Jannes and Jambres in Egypt, and the time of Epicurus and Zeno in Athens, down to President Eliot of Harvard and Mrs. Eddy, were put together the whole of it would not be worth the twenty-eighth chapter of Job or, as Dr. Gambrell well says, Burns’ little poem, The Cotter’s Saturday Night. And I may add that it is not worth one sermon on religion by the Negro preacher, John Jasper, of Richmond. There is less in it than in anything else that ever befogged the human mind.

There are three facts that bear upon the matter of the reopening of this question of inspiration. The first fact is that before the time of Paul the Grecian philosophers, the Epicureans on the one hand, and the Stoics on the other hand, had attempted to account for the universe and everything in it by a theory of evolution or by fate. That it, on the face of it, left out God and the supernatural, but Paul buried both under his magnificent oration as you will find recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts.

We now come to the second fact. Within the last sixty years Charles Darwin wrote his book, Descent of Man, claiming that man is derived from the lower forms of life, and through his coadjutors, Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, Wallace and hundreds of others, this theory of evolution was popularized.

It never was popular before, but they so discussed the subject that it reached the people, and it had this merit: it very modestly and quite consistently claimed the position of agnosticism. In other words, so far as that theory goes, it is impossible to know anything of God, if there be a God. Huxley stated the position when he used the term “agnostic.” My position is that this theory has nothing to do with the supernatural. It commenced below that realm, and so toward all supernatural matters it simply says, “We don’t know.” Now, that agrees exactly with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:10 :

“God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God…But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.” So we see that on this point Paul and Huxley stand on the same platform.

We come now to consider the third fact: Certain school men, coming from Christian schools, began to apply the principles of the atheistic theory of evolution both to human history and to Biblical history with the aim to eliminate all the supernatural. They fell over themselves in the scramble to do that.

These so-called Christian expositors of the Darwinian theory of evolution are hard to describe. They are neither fish nor fowl, neither pig nor puppy. They are like Mr. Lincoln’s ox on the fence, unable to go forward or backward, unable to gore the hounds in front or to kick the ones biting him behind, and so they do nothing but bellow.

I say that these so-called Christian exponents of the heathen theory of evolution have driven millions of Protestants back to Romanism, and tens of thousands of others back to atheism.

They have done more to discount the value of Christian schools than all the other agencies in the world put together. It is a matter of simple fact that a pious country boy is safer on supernatural questions on his religion in the Texas State University than he would be in the great majority of the so-called Christian universities. He is more apt to come back home a sane Christian in his thinking.

These school people who are discussing this subject take themselves too seriously. They are mere doctrinaires, but this much they do accomplish-they create the spirit of irreverence for holy things. A cattleman would understand my characterization of them when I say that they are dry cattle, barren, and unfruitful, and if by chance any of them should give a little milk, it is either blue or too thin to raise cream on, or else it is made bitter by the poisonous weeds that they have eaten, and so unpalatable.

I repeat that the danger from this application of the heathen theory of evolution to the Bible and to Biblical criticism, brings about a new generation of practical men who say, “If there is no such thing as inspiration of the Bible, then we will disregard it.: If there be no such thing as God, if the supernatural is eliminated!, then we will live as we please.” This is not the schoolman; it is the literary descendants the schoolmen rear. They say, “We will kill, we will apply the torch of conflagration.”

Whenever you sow a nation down with the heathen theory as applied to the Bible, you may look for a crop of anarchy - of armed men striking at everything, repeating just what was done in France in the days of the French Revolution. When this trouble comes; when the practical men put into application what the schoolmen teach, the schoolmen will stand off and say, “We did not mean that; we didn’t mean to be devilish like that.”

They did not. They were simply trying to exploit themselves, but this crop came from the evolution-seed they sowed. In Æsop’s fable about the trumpeter, you remember the trumpeter was captured, and he asked to be spared; he said he had not fought and killed men.

“No,” said the other, “but you blew the trumpet and called the men who were armed and who did kill.”

I say that a breath of this modern theory is as cold as the last gasp of a dying man, and that what they teach is more fatal to the human race than any fire that fanaticism ever kindled, or any superstition that ever darkened the land.

I will say further, which you will find as you read, that they are in their own esteem wiser than seven men that can render a reason. They believe that wisdom will die with them. They are the most conceited and most gullible and possess the least judicial mind of any set of egotists that ever kicked up a row in this world.

Now, that is what has re-opened this question of inspiration. That is where it came from, and wherever one of them enters a school as a teacher, I don’t care who he may be nor what his qualities in other directions, as sure as rain will bring up Johnson grass, he will raise a crop of religious doubters in the school where he teaches.

Now we will take up the question of inspiration, since it has been raised in that way, and in order to get the matter before the reader I will cite the passage upon which I will comment. I will say some things which I have said before, but as this is to be a complete discussion I want every point brought out clearly. The passage is 2 Timothy 3:14-16 : “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

I take up first the term, “scriptures.” Scriptures may mean any writing, but when we say Holy Scriptures that qualifies the word, discriminating between the sacred Scriptures and all other kinds of scriptures, and when we say, “inspired,” that indicates the means by which these Scriptures became holy writings. The inspired writings of God necessarily are holy.

I take up next the word, “Bible.” The word, “Bible,” is derived from the Greek neuter plural, to Biblia, which means the books-a collection of books. And so when we say, “Holy Bible,” we mean the Holy Library.

Now, what books belong to this collection? Everybody knows that they are the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament sixty-six in all and in the Philadelphia Confession of Faith every one of these books is mentioned by name, and in the New Hampshire Confession of Faith is this expression, given in the first chapter of this volume and which I here quote again:

“We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world the true centre of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and opinions shall be tried.” No man can obtain a position on the teaching force of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that does not write his name under that article. All the Baptist churches, or nearly all of them in the South, adopt that New Hampshire Confession; our Associations and the Baptist General Convention of Texas do this. That is where we stand on the subject of the inspiration of the Scriptures. And I state as a fact that you cannot find in Texas any reputable presbytery that would lay the hands of ordination on any candidate for the ministry that holds loose views on the subject of the inspiration of the Bible.

Now notice again the words of that Scripture that I cite: The Greek, ta hiera grammata, “The Holy Scriptures,” spoken of collectively; then it is spoken of distributively, Pasa graphe. Every one of these Scriptures is God-inspired. It is impossible for language to be plainer.

Now notice the object of having inspired Scriptures: That there may be a perfect standard, not an imperfect one-a perfect standard of what man is to be, of what he is to do, of what he is to think, of how he is to live in religious matters; not only a perfect standard which prescribes being, thinking, doing and living, but a standard so perfect that it will convict a man of any departure from that standard, when he has heard it; not only the standard so perfect as to convict, but the standard so perfect as to correct any departure in being, thinking, doing or living. In the religious realm there are three respects in which the object of inspiration is to furnish the standard.

Now let us notice the next point. It is to make, not only a perfect standard, but a perfect man; that the man of God may be perfect. Not perfect in the sense of sinlessness, but in conduct-well-rounded, symmetrical conduct. John L.

Sullivan, I might say, was a perfect man physically, or Voltaire a perfect man mentally, or that George Washington and Robert E. Lee were perfect men all round - physically, intellectually, spiritually, and complete, sound, symmetrical. The third thing that it is to produce is, not only a perfect standard and a complete man, but a complete equipment for the service of that perfect man. This Scripture says that the man of God should be perfect, completely equipped, as a performer of every good deed. Now, this is why the book is inspired; this is the object of it. Who is there living that will say Shakespeare is inspired as the Bible is inspired? Could you, from reading Shakespeare, obtain a perfect standard of what a man should think and be and do a standard that would convict a man of every departure from right being, thinking, doing and living a standard that would correct every departure from right being, thinking or doing a standard that would train every one in right being, right doing, and right thinking in a religious sense?

We hear it upon the lips of some people, “Yes, I believe in inspiration; I believe that every writer is inspired.”

Well, that is not the kind of inspiration we are talking about.     

Thus brings up the next word. We have discussed “Scriptures,” and “Holy Scriptures,” and every one of these, Pasa graphe. Now I am going to take up the word, “inspiration.” Our English words “inspire” and “inspiration” are derived from the compound Latin words, inspirare and inspiratio. Literally, those words mean “to breathe on or into” and “a breathing on or into.” This is the literal meaning of these words.

Now, what is the Scriptural meaning of these words? We get the Scriptural meaning of the word where God the Father or the Son does the breathing on or into. That is Scriptural inspiration. I have already given a definition of inspiration; now I give a more extended definition:

Inspiration is that communication of supernatural power from God which invariably and adequately and even perfectly accomplishes the end designed by it, whatever that end may be, and which (and this is an important part of the definition) no inherent force that is resident in nature, and no development of, or combination of inherent forces would in any length of time or under any environment bring about.

I want you to get that definition written in letters of fire upon the tablet of your memory: that inspiration, in its Scriptural meaning, is that communication from God of a supernatural power invariably and adequately and perfectly accomplishing the end desired, whatever that end may be. It may be this or it may be that; it is such a supernatural power that no inherent force resident in nature, no development of an inherent force, no combination of inherent forces could, through any length of time bring it about. I will stand or fall on that definition.

I repeat that whatever the need may be and that means that the needs of inspiration may be various, as I will prove to you before the discussion is concluded that whatever the need is, inspiration accomplishes that need every time, everywhere, without any instance of failure.

Now we have come to the cream of the matter. We will get at this word by a method that no other man that I know of has ever done. I am going to give some matters that you will not find in any book.

I once delivered twelve lectures on this subject, and I ordered every book I could find on the inspiration of the Scriptures. I have two shelves full of these books at my house, and about six of them are some account; the rest of them are straw. I will take up the examples of inspiration in the next chapter.