Transferred from Unicorn thread:

Did Isaiah also speak from his own perspective when he wrote in Isaiah 40:22, "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth,"? Do you think that David had any idea what he was actually speaking in Psalm 22?

And what can we gather from 1 Peter 1:10-12?
Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

What I am saying is that God used men in such a way that the words written were exactly what God intended. The men often likely did not even understand what they were writing. The wondrous mystery of how God accomplished this work is beyond comprehension. What is certain is that those he used to pen the words did not create those words. God implanted them so that, as they wrote, the Spirit of God guided the mind of the man to "color" the words as He saw fit.

[Rats, I thought that my crayon illustration that just popped into my head was so perfect and easy to understand that it might get included in the next edition of Difficult Bible Doctrines Made Simple. ]

We are dealing with semantics here. Let me ask you this before I proceed...

Did God use dictation when the writers were guided by the Holy Spirit?

I agree totally that "the words written were exactly what God intended." In fact I said that already. The manner in which this is done is the issue here. I would contend that the level of sovereignty you hold to is not as high as mine. What I mean is that what is more sovereign: a God who controls the writers in such a way where the writers had no clue what they were writing OR a God who contorls the writers in spite of the fact that the writers retained their volition and knew what they wee writing. It seems that a God that controls robots is not as sovereign as a God who controls volitional beings. This is definitely in the realm of philosophy so I don't want to keep going with this for too long.

Thus Paul wrote lettes to churches and signed it himself. It is still thus says the Lord. That is why I refer to the human agents as "writers" not "authors." God is the ultimate author. The human agents were sovereignly used by God to pen exactly what He wanted them to write. The humans never lost conscienceness. They maintained their own writing styles. They emphasized different doctrines. But God is the final source of Scripture. Again, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this. The whole sovereignty/responsibility seem to conflict yet they are both taught in Scripture.

This post was last modified: Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:57 AM by Greektim.

I am a little slow w/ illustrations some times. I understand now. I think there is a lot of truth in it as well. I still don't think that means the writers were passive in Scipture writing. But God probably had Paul write Romans b/c Paul was the right man for the job. But Paul knew what he was writing. That is why he refers to himself in Romans 7:24 - "Wretched man that I am!"

I fully agree with you about the apparent conflict. When we come to a complete understanding of the conflict between the sovereignty of God and the free choice of man with respect to salvation, then possibly we can see how these two issues are very similar.

To answer the question about dictation: I really don't know. I find it difficult to picture that it was some kind of audible event, but I also don't think that the writers were coming up with the wording and then God simply "approved" of the choice of expression. To stray very much away from the idea of dictation puts one in the dangerous position of judging the intent of the words from human experience. (i.e. since David was a shepherd, he could appropriately describe God's relationship to us as the Shepherd; since Amos was a herdman, he could ... whups, that won't work)

It is important never to refer to the writers as "authors". I find that often this happens with preachers who otherwise would go ballistic if you asked them why they don't believe in inspiration. It is a subtle distortion that has become far too common.

Well it seems progress is being made. There is finally some agreement.
I don't believe that God simply approved of what was written by the writers either. That would place sovereignty chronologically after responsibility, thus making God unsovereign since He would have to wait. I think it was somethig that took place at the same time. Whether the writer was prompted by the HOly Spirit to say something a particular way, I don't know. What I do know is that different authors have different writing styles, and God was still very capable of making sure His message was written exactly how He wanted it in spite of differing literary styles. God knowing the actual as well as the possible could easily choose men whose style would precisely match what God wanted to be written (your crayon analogy is good).

I think Psalm 22 is a great example of the human writer not fully understanding what He was writing. There was a level of comprehension and awareness (however small it was), but surely He had no idea of the magnitude of what he was writing and how it was to be fulfilled in Christ. I also think that these examples are few and far between.

I must disagree with this. I don't believe any of the Messianic prophecies could have been understood at all. In fact, one could probably throw in all of the prophetic passages. Not really few or far between, in my opinion.

GreekTim, not to be a pest, but to point out that one of the "signal" words that I use to measure where a participant is in this discussion is the word "author" being used to refer to the writers. As you said earlier, you use "writer" as opposed to "author" to emphasize the Authorship of God. Way back in the infamous Unicorn thread, post #22, you called them authors. This was part of the leap from unicorns to inspiration. It is possible that Jim and I both subconsciously then labeled you as one who viewed inspiration differently than we did. At least I will say that for myself. Though I don't think that we are exactly in agreement, I think that your comments on this thread have been more compatible. Now the real challenge begins. What about the link between inspiration and preservation?

"Any" is a big word. I do think there were times where the prophets had a hard time seeing the Messiah and understanding it as we do. But that is b/c our perspective is different than theirs. Larkin's illustrations aren't always great, but this one is good depicting the OT prophets perspective of Christ.
   
Since the Church was a mystery unrevealed in the OT, it would be hard enough for the prophets to know anything about 2 different comings. But I fully believe that the prophets when writing knew that they were writing something about the Messiah. Daniel must have known about the future Kingdom for his people and the Messiah since it was him who translated the dreams which God gave to him (Dan. 2, 7, 9). Surely Micah knew he was giving revelation of the birthplace of the Messiah (5:2). Thus the magi did not need the NT to tell them the location. It was common knowledge of the day and thus common knowledge for Micah. Zechariah probably knew that he was speaking of a future coming of the Messiah and establishment of the Kingdom (14:4+).

While it might have been difficult for them to fully grasp as we do, they still had adequate knowledge of the Messiah. It was even hard for the disciples to understand the order of the Messiah to suffer first and then reign, though this order is always seen in Scripture (cf. Psalm 22 & 1 Peter 1:11).

It just seems like this kind of thinking makes the writing of Scripture arbitrary on the part of the human instrument. It is almost as if God possessed them when writing. That is why I claim that the human writers have conscienceness and volition throughout the writing process. Otherwise, the human writer would need no credibility. But God used credible men like prophets and apostles to pen the word. If there was to be arbitrary writing on the part of the writer, then God should have arbitrarily picked the writers. But clearly He didn't.

I am rambling. I'll stop now. I had to retype this 3 times. Don't venture away from the page when making a reply. You lose all the info you were writing.

Is it possible to make that pic larger in the post? Does anyone know how to do that?

This post was last modified: Fri Mar 28, 2008 07:41 AM by Greektim.

Thank you for pointing out my error. I have to constantly remind my congregation that I am not perfect (yeah right ). I had a Professor who instilled in me that "words have meaning." I try to make sure I mean exactly what I say down to the smallest semantic. It seems I slipped up. Again thanks for the correction.
(Putting my doctrinal statement together was a nightmare for this reason. I am very obsessive compulsive & analytical so every minute detail and wording had to be just right. That thing turned out to be 15 pages long!!!)

This post was last modified: Thu Mar 27, 2008 03:10 PM by Greektim.

"Any" may be too bold a word, but my emphasis was on "understanding" primarily. The writers may have had some knowledge, but I do not think that the next step to understanding was all that common. Do you think that the prophets had that much insight? Was the cross that clear before it happened? If so, the synagogues of Jesus' day had really fallen down on the job.

Also, the wise men read the facts, but could not understand completely. They missed the target after all (which was still in God's plan). Maybe their map didn't have Bethlehem marked in Chaldean (or whatever their native tongue was) or it got lost in the translation. Or perhaps they had a "modern" Chaldean version (NCLXX - New Chaldean Septuagint) and "Bethlehem" had be changed to "Jerusalem".

heading for work ... later, Brother,

I do think that they had much insight. But again nothing compared to the perspective that we have. So their insight is limited by progressive revelation. Obviously the cross was never clearly understood, especially since crucifixion was not invented until after some of the writing prophets and popularized well into the inter-testamental period. But the sacrificial death was understood I would say.

Also, the wise men read the facts, but could not understand completely. They missed the target after all (which was still in God's plan). Maybe their map didn't have Bethlehem marked in Chaldean (or whatever their native tongue was) or it got lost in the translation. Or perhaps they had a "modern" Chaldean version (NCLXX - New Chaldean Septuagint) and "Bethlehem" had be changed to "Jerusalem".

I like that, the NCLXX.
I think if you look at Matthew, that they didn't know where it was going to happen, just that it was the Jewish Messiah who was on the way. THus they went to the Jewish Capital - Jerusalem. It was the Scribes who told Herod and the magi the location. My point being, it was not disclosed until the NT revealed it. It was common knowledge for the people of the day who had the Scriptures and studied them. Thus if study was required to know of the Messianic prophecies, then we can be sure that the writing prophets studied. 1 Peter 1:11 records that they did. So maybe understanding Messianic prophecies are not unatainable for them.

Something else, Isaiah 53 was always considered Messianic even during the days of Christ. It was only until after Christ and the early Church began to support that idea that the Jewish scholars changed their view. It just seems that some of these passages are too obvious for the human writers not to understand at least a little bit that it concerns the future coming Messiah.

and

Their seems to be an apparent conflict, but the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man quite compliment each other very well.

Moving along, maybe someone ought to reiterate what they mean by inspiration/preservation. Is it not a clear teaching?

GreekTim believes that the bible cannot be preserved outside of the Greek:

and

I believe this to be a fundamental issue that needs to be resolved between everyone here. All of the disagreements here hang on this belief here.

Love in Christ,

Jim

Answer to GreekTim's question: To put it simply, God put into the NT the intended understanding of the OT verse so that nothing was added or lost in the meaning.

By the way, this is one of the great mysteries to me.

If I doubted God's perfect preservation of His Word [which I don't], specifically preserving the exact message that He intended to be available for those who would later read it, and I allowed for the hand of man to accidentally or intentionally alter the text after the autographs, then I could just say that the variation in the exact wording between to OT and NT versions of a given quotation was proof that errors could creep in.

If, however, I believed [which I do] that God divinely superintended the pure transmission of the text from generation to generation (Ps. 12:6-7), so that each generation had the complete text that was available to previous generations, then I have to believe that there is a purpose to the variations observed when comparing OT quotations. A classic to me is where Jesus stopped part way through the passage, instead of completing the OT prophecy. (Luke 4:17-21)

The mystery to me about the above verses is: Was Jesus reading from the exact text that Isaiah wrote, and the variation takes place as Luke pens them in Greek, or was Jesus reading from a translation which caused the variation, or was there some other explanation? [any answer is speculation] Since the period of inspiration was still in effect, we must agree that both the Isaiah version and the Luke version are equally inspired. Correct?

- - - - - - -

As this point in the discussion of inspiration/preservation, as best I can tell, everyone agrees that the autographs were the exact words that God wanted written. Secondly, as best I can tell, everyone agrees that God preserved His Words at least in the Hebrew and Greek apographs. Does everyone agree up to this point?

Yes to your 2 questions at the end.
And to add to the Isaiah/Luke passage, I think Christ was expounding on an example of a prophet mentioning both 1st & 2nd comings. Christ points at the part that deals with the 1st coming - namely the favorable/acceptable year of the Lord. The day of vengeance referring to the 2nd coming. That's my view.

This post was last modified: Fri Mar 28, 2008 04:11 PM by Greektim.