04.08. Some Questions Answered...

8. SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED AND A RESUME OF THE WHOLE DISCUSSION OF INSPIRATION This closing chapter will be devoted to a very brief review of the general subject, so as to fix in the mind what we have discussed. Before doing that, however, I answer some questions propounded oftentimes, to this effect: The theory of verbal inspiration is objected to on the ground that it means merely the inspiration of the autographs-the original manuscripts-and that none of the original manuscripts survive. In fact, there is no autograph copy of any ancient book of the Bible, “and the copies that we have,” says this objector, “are so varied as to the text that it is practically impossible to assume verbal inspiration.”

They further state that the great variety of the texts of the New Testament books alone show at least fifteen hundred variations in the text. This was discovered after the first Bible was printed, when they began to print the Bible, so that all the copies were necessarily exactly alike. The impress from the types would be exactly the same, and it was no longer possible for variations of the text to occur, so that the variation of texts lies a thousand years back of 1456, the time of the printing of the first Bible. Within this period of a thousand years we were dependent upon copies of the New Testament, and there were multitudes of these copies, and the variations amount to, say, fifteen hundred. My reply to that is, in the first place, that if every variation claimed was granted, it in no way interferes with any doctrine or promise or duty commanded in the Bible. In the next place, when you take out the variations they amount to nothing; that is to say, they are the mere transposition of words, or some constructions of grammar that in no way materially affect the sense. When you take out those variations only about one one-thousandth part of the New Testament is affected by the variations one part out of a thousand-and out of that thousandth part the only variations that might change anything can be counted on the fingers. So that when it is carefully scrutinized this whole question of the variations of the text is a very weak argument. The first reason is that no other books in the world in their copies show so little variation. Other books since printing was introduced show more variations than the variations of the New Testament.

We have more copies and more harmonious copies of the New Testament than of any other book in the world. The copies of the New Testament books were carefully prepared. In the next place, it has not been deemed essential to go back to the original of any other book with anything like the degree of zeal and energy that has been manifested in getting back to the original of the Bible. The work of scholars, the journeys taken, the expense incurred, the years of toil which they have devoted to the subject, and a great multitude of them of all enlightened nations, show that there is an importance in getting at just what the Holy Spirit says in the matter of the New Testament books that does not apply to any other book in the world.

We hear of nothing like that on the Koran or the Book of Mormon.

Now if we can count on our fingers all the important variations in the text of the New Testament, that fact, instead of being against verbal inspiration, is in favor of verbal inspiration. The second question propounded was this: “Is there any need of verbal inspiration, since the masses of the people have to rely upon a translation anyhow? Not many people read the Hebrew and the Greek texts, but most of them have to read in their native tongue. Inasmuch as the people have to depend upon translations, why make such a to-do about the inspiration of the original?” The first time I ever did any carpentering I wanted to put up a small fence, and I thought I could do the work myself. I thought it was useless to hire a carpenter to put up a little picket fence. There were some pieces of timber that had to be sawed in equal lengths and then nailed up, and I thought I could do that as well as anybody, and so I measured off my first paling the height I wanted it, and measured my second one by that. Then I laid aside the first one and measured the third paling by the second, the fourth by the third, the fifth by the fourth, and so on, and by the time I got to the twelfth paling there was at least an inch difference in the length of the first and the twelfth palings. Why? Simply because I was following each time a faulty standard, and I increased the difference every time between that and the preceding standard.

Now I want to apply that to this matter. Say there was no standard of text at all that only the idea of the Bible was inspired, and then we had to have translations, and the translations would be made from translations, and so on as additional copies were needed by the time we got our tenth translation we would be a thousand miles from the original translation. But in our present translations we don’t go back, say, to the King James Version and revise that and put that in more modern English, but each time we make a translation we get just as close back to the original standard as possible, and in this way the translations become a great means for determining the true text.

Suppose we take the Greek translation of the, Old Testament. There are several of them-three or four and we take the Syriac, or Peshito, then the Old Latin translation, the Vulgate, and then the Septuagint translation, and so on throughout the various nations of the world. Every one becomes valuable to us, for each one makes an effort to go back to the true text. We do not try to make a new standard, but try to get back to the original text as nearly as possible, and in that way instead of the deviations increasing as the years roll by, the variations are diminishing. There are less now than there used to be, and if we were to make another translation, say forty years hence, that translation would be nearer the original than the American Standard translation, which we are now using, and of course very much nearer than the King James translation.

Now, that is the reason for having a standard, and it is bound to be a standard of words. The integrity of the text of any book is maintained whenever it is preserved incorrupt, or whenever there are means of restoring anything that is wrong, or making it right again. While we don’t maintain that the original text, just as Paul wrote it, or as Peter wrote it, or as Matthew wrote it, or claim that the autograph copy can be shown, yet we do maintain that by the old manuscripts, by the old translations, by the old quotations and by the internal evidence we virtually restore the books of the Bible so that it is just as it was when it was written by the men inspired of God.

Now, one other remark: God’s leaving this kind of labor to be performed by man has had a tremendous effect in bringing about a study of the Bible that would never have been undertaken if to every nation there had been handed down, in God’s own handwriting, a text of the Bible in their language.. If it had been handed down as a solid book from the skies it would not have brought about that reverence for the Bible, that attention to its study that has been accorded it. It would not have called forth that wholesome effect, with sacrifices of toil and money. It would not have engaged the study of so many devout scholars.

These things would not have been, if a Bible had been handed down from heaven in English. So there is nothing in that to interfere with the argument which has been made upon inspiration.

Now I call attention to a general outline of the whole subject that has been presented. It has been stated that to discuss simply the subject of inspiration, it is necessary to assume acquaintance with the text, the canon, and the credibility.

All of those, in logical order, go before the subject of inspiration. Taking for granted an acquaintance with the text of the Bible, the canon of the Bible, and the historical credibility of the Bible, I have given no time to the discussion of those subjects, but have assumed that we are taking the Bible as a historical verity with the best of other histories, and that we have the books as they were originally given, and have then discussed the subject of inspiration in the following order:

First: the inspiration of the Scriptures as believed by Baptists from time immemorial.

Second: the question of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures re-opened.

Third: examples of inspiration and their explanation.

Fourth: Luke’s case, and other important matters.

Fifth: certain qualifying facts and the circumstances which modified our ideas of inspiration, enabling us properly to define and limit it.

Sixth: we discussed the difficulties of inspiration and answered certain objections.

Seventh: we took up the book of Daniel as an outstanding example of attack by radical critics. In these foregoing discussions we have established the inspiration of Jesus Christ, and the inspiration of the New Testament writers.

We then applied the testimony of Christ and His apostles to the Old Testament Scriptures, and when their testimony was applied we learned that they taught the following things:

First: the Old Testament is a single document the Word of God, the Scriptures; that the Old Testament has been called collectively, as to its books, Sacred books, Holy writings, oracles of God, prophetic writings, the prophecies of Scripture, and titles of that kind.

Then from these general statements Scriptures by Christ were introduced showing that the divisions of the Old Testament are, in general, the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. Then of every book of the Old Testament clear declarations by these witnesses that every one of the Old Testament writings was inspired of God; and then that the end of this inspiration, or the object in view, was that they might become profitable, and profitable for a definite purpose. All that was presented in the foregoing chapters which I regard as fundamental upon this subject.

Having considered, then, the basis of inspiration, the circumstances were analyzed both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. For instance, a distinction was made between inspiration and other words, such as revelation, which is getting the knowledge of God, while inspiration is accurately stating or recording the knowledge of God; illumination, for the purpose of understanding the statements and records of the knowledge of God, and regeneration and sanctification, for the purpose of harmonizing man with the Word of God. In this way we brought out the discriminating idea between these terms. Then examples were shown where men were inspired who had no revelation made to them, therefore inspiration and revelation are not identical. Instances also were given where men were inspired who had no illumination, therefore inspiration and illumination are distinct. The case of the prophets was cited, when they wrote out the words of God and did not know what they meant, and prayed for light on them, and even the angels stooped over from the heavens and tried to look into those things.

We found in the case of Caiaphas that he was not even conscious that he was inspired, supposing that he was speaking his own words, with a wicked intent in his mind, and yet what he said was in a higher sense from God, and bad a meaning attached to it different from the meaning in his own mind.

Then examples were shown where men were inspired who were not good men, and examples were shown of inspired men who were good men, but not sanctified men, not perfectly good men, and therefore there was no chance, when the matter was properly analyzed, to confound inspiration with revelation, regeneration, sanctification, or illumination.

Finally, as the discussion proceeded, only that part of the inspiration was considered that pertained to the records; that while men were inspired to state what God said as God wished it to be said, we were not present, did not hear those statements, and therefore would not be benefitted unless there was a phase of inspiration that went beyond the mere utterance of the Word of God.

So, in the latter part of the discussions, stress was laid upon the inspiration of the writing that the Scriptures were God-inspired. The records are inspired, and that is the part of the subject that most nearly concerns us, and that inspiration was an inspiration of the records, which made those records inerrable, not only in idea, but in word. In that case they were written just as God willed them to be written; but while the record was inspired, it did not follow that what the wicked said in that record was inspired of God, or that what the devil said in that word was inspired of God, but the record of what they said was inspired of God.

I hope the distinction is clear, because one brother was very much confounded the other day when we were discussing inspiration. He wanted to know if that dumb brute was inspired to speak, if the devil was also inspired to speak in job and in Matthew. My reply was that, in both cases, the record was inspired, and the one that prepared the record of the words of the dumb brute was inspired, the one that prepared the record of job was inspired and the one that prepared the record of the temptation of Christ was inspired, and it seems to me that any intelligent mind could see that.

David committed a grievous sin. The record that tells us about that is an inspired record, but it doesn’t tell us that God inspired David to commit the sin.

Now, if this record, the discussion went on to show, is God-inspired, and inerrable, then there must be no contradiction between the parts. If God inspired the one hundred and tenth Psalm, and God inspired the letter to the Hebrews, then the two must be in accord. They do not fight against each other; and if God inspired Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul to give us a record of the life and work and office of Jesus Christ, then Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul must be in accord. There can be no contradictions between them, and the position that we take on the matter is that there are no contradictions in the Bible. We take that stand openly, not incidentally; advisedly, not ill-advisedly, but after years of patient study of the subject the stand has been boldly taken that the books of the Bible are in harmony with each other, and not merely in harmony with each other, but more than that, the harmony is so vital that it is not a harmony of mere juxtaposition, which is a mechanical connection, but there is a connection far more than that-it is a living connection. For instance, there is no contradiction between the finger and the ear. They are different, and yet there is a living connection between them. It is not like a wooden ear and a wooden finger. There is a living connection the same as between the eye and the heart, between the hand and the foot; and as the whole body has a vital connection, so all the parts of the Bible constitute that living, that quick and powerful Word of God that abideth forever.

Then the author proceeded to state that inspiration was closed-that not only was the canon of the Old Testament completed, but the canon of the New Testament was completed, and if completed, then what follows? There must be no superfluity, no redundancy. There is not more there than is necessary. There is everything there that is necessary.

There is no superfluity in the Word of God. We cannot trim it down. It does not admit of subtraction, and if it be a complete revelation of God, there are no deficiencies in it nothing that needs to be filled out. Therefore it is incapable of addition.

We can no more add to it than we can take from it, and if it be a complete revelation, an inspired Bible, then there must be sufficiency in it. By the sufficiency of the Scriptures is meant that they meet all the demands of the case.

There is no possible condition of human nature that can be conceived of by the mind where the Scriptures would fail of sufficient light for the guidance of the man in that condition.

They are all-sufficient. Not only did this follow, as the discussion showed, but there is efficiency-not merely sufficiency, but efficiency. It is powerful,, able to make one wise unto salvation through the Holy Spirit, who inspires the Word of God; is competent for all the purposes contemplated, so that in order to convict a man of sin we need not as a preacher go outside the Word of God to get the means of conviction to regenerate a man; we don’t need any testimony beyond the Word of God. They are convicted by the Word of God, or through the Word of God by the Holy Spirit, and therefore when a man goes out to preach, the subject-matter of his preaching is provided for. When he goes out to sow seed, the seed is provided. He is not to mix that with other seed. The sower goes out to sow, and he sows the seed that God provided-the incorruptible seed of the Word-and when he preaches, he preaches the Word; so the teachings of the Bible are efficient. The man that goes out to represent God as a preacher must preach the things that God says, must preach the Word of God, and no other word.

Now, that doesn’t mean that a preacher must not sometimes deliver a Fourth-of-July oration. He may sometimes write a poem, if he wishes, on the stars, on the mists and rainbows of a cascade. That is all right, but he must not expect to convert the world with them. The efficiency is in God’s Word, as well as the sufficiency. There is enough of it there. All of it that is there is needed, and it is very full, too, for it is a live wire.

There is no dead wire in it. It is the living Word of God, and is like a two-edged sword, and with the Spirit guiding that sword it can press to the very thoughts and intents of the human heart. Now, all of that is dependent upon its inspiration. This is as far as the discussion has gone.

I will now take up what some people have regarded as an insuperable obstacle in the way of accepting the inspiration of the Scriptures. They say that if the Bible is inspired, and all of its records are accurate, and that there is no errancy in it, then it puts a man of science in the position that he must choose between science and the Bible, their teachings being diverse. To this man I would say that he is mistaken, and I would challenge him or any other man to show one solitary contradiction between science and the Bible. But he must confine himself to science.

Science is something known, something proven. He must not bring up his speculative theories, his mental vagaries, and call them science. I challenge him to bring up a single contradiction between the teachings of Scripture and real science.

I have seen that tested on Genesis 1:1-31. That gives an account of the creation of the universe, the formation of the earth, and the creation of man, and to this very day science-not science as represented by some men who try to set the teachings of science over against the Bible by butting their heads against the accounts in Genesis, job, certain of the Psalms, and Paul’s declarations at Athens-but true science is and has ever been in harmony with the Scriptures. The Word of God stands today grasping the hand of all real science just like the coat-of-arms of the State of Kentucky “United we stand, divided we fall.”

Now I will give you some science: When I was a young fellow, just before the Civil War, a great political emergency arose the question of slavery and men not only discussed it from political standpoints, but they began to discuss it from Bible standpoints, and then scientific standpoints, and there was published in the city of New York a daily paper, and because of its peculiar views on the subject of slavery it attained a circulation of many thousands. Just before the war a series of articles was published in that paper to prove that the Negro and the Caucasian, by scientific demonstration, did not have a common origin that it was impossible in the light of science that all men came from one man.

If that is true, that puts the Bible in default, for if anything in the world is taught in the Bible, it is the unity of the race.

It certainly does teach that the human race descended from Adam, and that the plan of salvation is based upon that fact, and all human redemption is based upon the fact that all these lost descendants of the first Adam are redeemed and saved in the Second Adam.

About this time two doctors, in Mobile, Alabama, who saw the question from a Southern standpoint, published a very large book, and they contradicted the articles which were published in the New York daily. They saw a conflict between science and the Bible. Well, all that was necessary in that case was not to move the Bible into the scientific camp, but let the Bible stand, and see all the scientists trooping back to get under the Bible-tent; so, I have even lived to see the time come when facts not only prove to the world that scientists are ready to demonstrate the unity of the human race, but that they, like the Indian, stood so straight up that they leaned over, and they went so far as to state that all beings had a common origin not only man, but monkeys and man; not only monkeys and man, but elephants and man; not only elephants and man, but jellyfish and man; not only jellyfish and man, but cabbage heads and man. Now, all that is necessary is not to move the Bible, but just let it stand.

I have lived to see the theory of Charles Darwin die again as Paul saw it die in its original habitation where it was proclaimed by its advocates in Athens, Corinth and Rome, and today the best advocates of science are just as ready to denounce Darwin as I am.

They say it is not science; and so the Bible goes along like Bunyan’s great path, and all along we see roads leading off from it, but they come back again. Some of them cross it at right angles, but then they wind around and come back again. The road goes right on, and about every thirty years we are in harmony with science, because it comes back to us. It plays all around us, first on one side and then on the other, but we need not follow it. We are wasting our time if we try to move the solid foundations of the Bible, so as to accommodate it to the shifting vagaries of science, falsely so-called.

Here comes a marvel. Take any of the accounts of the creation of the world, viz.: the Babylonian, the Egyptian, or that which the Chinese, the Japanese, or the people of Hindustan regard as the origin of the world, and when has there ever been harmony with any scientific fact on that point? It has all the time been confusion.

Now, how was it that a Hebrew away back yonder in the land of Egypt, when all the rest of the world was at sea, if he was not inspired, could write an account of creation that stands and smiles serenely, impervious to every assault of so-called scientific thinking today, as it was then? It is the inspired Word of God.

I have had scientists to bring up that instance of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still. Some preachers skip that chapter, and I am sorry for them. They had better read it just as it is. They had better take it just as it reads.

Only a few weeks ago I saw in a book of great power, an absolute demonstration of what would have been projected as a result if the sun and the moon had stopped, and I have certainly seen it demonstrated that it would not have occurred. But suppose they put God into the account; if they would just put God in there, that would be a guarantee. He would know how to manage it. I suppose we all believe in an all-powerful God; He could take care of the situation, unless we have a God who finds some things too much for Him. I suppose He could manage that little affair just as He could raise a dead man to life that had gone into corruption. The great battleground, if we are going to make one of contradictions, is the battleground of the resurrection. Take the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul. Now, can any one, from those records, prove either errancy or contradiction in those accounts? I have been over it a great many times, and I freely confess that I see no contradiction in the statements of the witnesses.

I select now a single item which seems to be a positive contradiction in the whole thing. Mark says that Christ was crucified at a certain hour of the day, and John says that He was crucified about six hours later than that. Now, there are the statements with six hours difference. The commentator comes to it, throws down his pen and he says, “There must be some mistake here in the copy. As it stands it is a palpable contradiction.”

I have long since found out that a man ought to go slow about affirming a mistake in the copy. I admit that is a possibility, but I don’t believe that is the best way to meet this. Can it be reconciled in any other way?

Yes, and there is this explanation of it: Mark wrote as a Jew, and followed the Jewish method of computation, which was from sunrise to sunset and from sunset to sunrise. John followed the Roman method of computation, just exactly as we do. We count from midnight to noon and from noon to midnight. One minute after twelve o’clock, midnight, is A. M.

“Well,” says one, “if this is true, that will harmonize it exactly, but what is your evidence that John employed the Roman method?” My evidence is fully set forth in his Gospel. He used the Roman hour, and some of the cases absolutely demand it. All we have to do is to take the Gospel of John, go through it and see where he refers to hours.

That, of course, is met by the statement that the Romans did not use that method, and we simply meet that by proving that they did use it, and at least five of the best Roman historians state that they did. But the question comes up: Why should John employ that method and not the others? The answer is that the others wrote before the destruction of Jerusalem, before the Jewish nation had been blotted out by that fearful catastrophe. John wrote many years after Jerusalem was destroyed, when the Jewish method of computation no longer governed anywhere. The time that he wrote in Ephesus was about the year 90, or later, which would be at least twenty years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and it was the most natural thing in the world that all through his Gospel he should have employed the Roman method; and I can cite some passages in John where you are compelled to have it.

I have seen these contradictions melt away until I have lost all confidence in them. Now, a boy is usually a great deal smarter than his father, and than he is when he gets to be a father. When I was a boy I thought I had found a thousand contradictions in the Bible. In the old Bible of my young manhood I marked them.

Well, I had then nearly a thousand more contradictions than I have now. I do not see them now; they are not there. There are perhaps a half dozen in the Bible that I cannot explain satisfactorily to myself. I don’t say that my explanation of all the others would satisfy everybody. There are some that I cannot explain satisfactorily to myself; but since I have seen nine hundred and ninety-four out of the thousand coalesce and harmonize like two streams mingling, I am disposed to think that if I had more sense I could harmonize those other six; and even if I forever fail to harmonize them, God knows better than I know, and that when I know perfectly just as I now know only in part, and only a very small part, I will be able to understand that; and so when I come to things of that kind and cannot master them, I put them in a parenthesis and say, “I will come back; God won’t leave you penned forever; He will send somebody that can take away the difficulty and make it clear to me.” I assume that it can be done. The President of the State University once remarked about a noted infidel in Waco, that his infidelity arose from this: He had read a book against the Bible which he could not answer, and he concluded that as it was a book he could not answer, it was unanswerable, and it is the-best explanation I ever heard of that man. He is just the kind of man that would assume that anything he could not solve was unsolvable.

We will not take that position. We need to get away from such conceit.

Believing that we have an infallible standard, we will go on like the old-time Baptists, who put it in their articles of faith, and we can do nothing better than to close this last chapter with the same quotation from our Confession of Faith with which the first chapter was introduced:

“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 center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions shall be tried.”