Systematic Theology (Vol. 1-3). Augustus Hopkins Strong
in the world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that “Kuenen keeps this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were not moved to speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.” The following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position which Dr. Kuenen really held: “We do not allow ourselves to be deprived of God's presence in history. In the fortunes and development of nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the holy and all-wise Instructor of his human children. But the old contrasts must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a separate part of Israel's religious life directly from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in even one single point, so long also our view of the whole continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents of the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural development alone which accounts for all the phenomena” (Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585).
2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a messenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by quoting it with the formula: “It is written”; by declaring that “one jot or one tittle” of it “shall in no wise pass away,” and that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”
Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from the Psalms, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, “it is written”; see Mat. 4:4, 6, 7; 11:10; Mark 14:27; Luke 4:4–12. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of his day. He declared that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law” (Mat. 5:18). He said that “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35) = “the normative and judicial authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in the singular, ἡ γραφή] the idea of the unity of Scripture” (Meyer). And yet our Lord's use of O. T. Scripture was wholly free from the superstitious literalism which prevailed among the Jews of his day. The phrases “word of God” (John 10:35; Mark 7:13), “wisdom of God” (Luke 11:49) and “oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2) probably designate the original revelations of God and not the record of these in Scripture; cf. 1 Sam. 9:27; 1 Chron. 17:3; Is. 40:8; Mat. 13:19; Luke 3:2; Acts 8:25. Jesus refuses assent to the O. T. law respecting the Sabbath (Mark 2:27 sq.), external defilements (Mark 7:15), divorce (Mark 10:2 sq.). He “came not to destroy but to fulfil” (Mat. 5:17); yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5–35.
The apostles quote the O. T. as the utterance of God (Eph. 4:8—διὸ λέγει, sc. θεός). Paul's insistence upon the form of even a single word, as in Gal. 3:16, and his use of the O. T. for purposes of allegory, as in Gal 4:21–31, show that in his view the O. T. text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in their interpretations of the O. T., fall continually into a “narrow and unhappy literalism.” “The N. T. does not indeed escape Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to the very heart of the O. T. teaching;” see Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254.
3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises made to the Old Testament prophets.
Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye … teaching … and lo, I am with you.” Compare promises to Moses (Ex. 3:12), Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5–8), Ezekiel (Ezek. 2 and 3). See also Is. 44:3 and Joel 2:28—“I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed”; Mat. 10:7—“as ye go, preach”; 19—“be not anxious how or what ye shall speak”; John 14:26—“the Holy Spirit … shall teach you all things”; 15:26, 27—“the Spirit of truth … shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness” = the Spirit shall witness in and through you; 16:13—“he shall guide you into all the truth” = (1) limitation—all the truth of Christ, i.e., not of philosophy or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension—all the truth within this limited range, i.e., sufficiency of Scripture as rule of faith and practice (Hovey); 17:8—“the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them”; Acts 1:4—“he charged them … to wait for the promise of the Father”; John 20:22—“he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”Here was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit. Compare Mat. 10:19, 20—“it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.” See Henderson, Inspiration, 247, 248.
Jesus' testimony here is the testimony of God. In Deut. 18:18, it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great Prophet. In John 12:49, 50, Jesus says: “I spake not from myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.” John 17:7, 8—“all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.” John 8:40—“a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God.”
4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his influence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a level with the Old Testament Scriptures. We have not only direct statements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were supervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was the case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and epistles.
Statements:—1 Cor. 2:10, 13—“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit. … Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth”; 11:23—“I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”; 12:8, 28—the λόγος σοφίας was apparently a gift peculiar to the apostles; 14:37, 38—“the things which I write unto you … they are the commandment of the Lord”; Gal. 1:12—“neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ”; 1 Thess. 4:2, 8—“ye know what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus. … Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you.” The following passages put the teaching of the apostles on the same level with O. T. Scripture: 1 Pet. 1:11, 12—“Spirit of Christ which was in them” [O. T. prophets];—[N. T. preachers] “preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit”; 2 Pet. 1:21—O. T. prophets “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; 3:2—“remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” [O. T.], “and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” [N. T.]; 16—“wrest [Paul's Epistles], as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” Cf. Ex. 4:14–16; 7:1.
Implications:—2 Tim. 3:16—“Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable”—a clear implication of inspiration, though not a direct statement of it = there is a divinely inspired Scripture. In 1 Cor. 5:3–5, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired. There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other writings of the same extent. Notice the continual asseveration of authority, as in Gal. 1:1, 2, and the declaration that disbelief of the record is sin, as in 1 John 5:10, 11. Jude 3—“the faith which was once for all (ἅπαξ) delivered unto the saints.” See Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34, 234; Conant, Genesis, Introd., xiii, note; Charteris, New Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, authority.
The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished