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Course 17 · Lesson 1.1

Revelation and inspiration: two different ideas

14 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 17 outline

Module 1: What Christians Mean by Scripture

  1. Revelation and inspiration: two different ideas
  2. Models of inspiration across the traditions
  3. Inerrancy and infallibility: what each term claims
  4. Reading in historical and literary context

Module 2: How the Canon Was Formed

  1. The formation of the Old Testament canon
  2. The formation of the New Testament canon
  3. The Apocrypha and the deuterocanonical books
  4. Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons compared

Module 3: The Text and Its Transmission

  1. How manuscripts were copied
  2. Variants and how scholars weigh them
  3. The Old Testament text: Masoretic text, Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint
  4. What the manuscript evidence shows and does not show

Module 4: Apparent Contradictions

  1. A method for testing a claimed contradiction
  2. Numbers, names and parallel accounts
  3. Differences among the Gospel accounts
  4. Tensions that remain and how traditions handle them

Module 5: Difficult Old Testament Passages

  1. Reading difficult passages honestly
  2. The conquest narratives and the question of violence
  3. Slavery in the ancient world and in the Bible
  4. How Christians have read hard texts: the church fathers to today

Module 6: Archaeology and Chronology

  1. What archaeology can show
  2. The limits of archaeological evidence
  3. Dating events: kings, exile and the exodus debate
  4. Genealogies, ages and calculations

Module 7: Scripture and Science

  1. Ancient cosmology and the opening chapters of Genesis
  2. Approaches to Genesis and science among Christians
  3. Augustine, accommodation and caution in interpretation

Module 8: Writing a Response

  1. Choosing and framing a problem
  2. Building a response from context and tradition
  3. Admitting what remains unresolved

All courses

Program / Course 17: Defending Scripture / Lesson 1.1

What you will learn

  • Define revelation and inspiration and explain why Christians treat them as different ideas.
  • Describe the main New Testament texts that Christians cite when they speak of inspired Scripture.
  • Distinguish revelation that is written from revelation that is not.
  • State the strongest skeptical objection to the idea of an inspired book and explain how believers respond.

The big idea

Revelation is God making himself and his purposes known. Inspiration is a claim about a particular set of writings: that God guided the human authors so that their books are, in a real sense, his word to the church. The two ideas overlap but are not the same. God can reveal himself in events, in a person or in a spoken word without any book being written, and a book can be inspired without containing new revelation on every page. Keeping the two apart makes every later question about the Bible easier to ask clearly.

Key terms

Revelation
God making himself, his will or his saving acts known to human beings. It can happen through events, persons, speech or creation itself.
Inspiration
The belief that God worked through human authors so that the resulting writings are his word for the church. Christians differ on how he did so.
General revelation
What can be known of God through the created world and the human conscience, available in principle to everyone.
Special revelation
God’s self-disclosure in particular times and places, such as the call of Abraham, the law at Sinai and, for Christians, the coming of Jesus.
Theopneustos
The Greek word in 2 Timothy 3:16, often translated “inspired by God” or “God-breathed.” It is the only place in the New Testament where the word appears.
Canon
The list of books the church recognizes as Scripture. It is taken up in Module 2.
Oracle
A message believed to come directly from a god. Critics sometimes compare the Bible to oracles; believers usually say the comparison fails to account for the human authors’ own voices.

Background

Almost every religious tradition has some idea that a divine message has come to human beings. Christianity has a particular shape to that idea. It claims that God has acted in history: in the call of Israel, in the giving of the law, through the prophets and, above all, in Jesus of Nazareth. The Letter to the Hebrews begins with this thought: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken by his Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). The Bible is, in the first place, a record of and witness to that speaking.

This is why it matters to separate revelation from inspiration. If the two words are treated as the same, a reader may think the Bible must be a series of dictated messages. If they are pulled too far apart, a reader may think the Bible is only a human reflection on religious experience. Christian teaching tries to stay between these two errors. The Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches and the main Protestant confessions all say that Scripture is both fully a human work and in some real way God’s word. They differ about how to describe that relationship, which is the subject of the next lesson.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: What revelation means

Revelation means an unveiling. In Christian use it is God’s initiative: human beings do not climb up to God by their own cleverness, but God makes himself known. Paul writes that what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shewed it to them, and that his invisible attributes are clearly seen from the creation of the world (Romans 1:19-20). That is usually called general revelation.

Special revelation is more particular. God appears to Moses at the burning bush, speaks through Isaiah and Jeremiah, and, for Christians, becomes human in Christ. John’s Gospel says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Notice that in this view the fullest revelation is a person, not a book. A great deal of revelation in the Bible happened before it was written down, and some was never written down at all (John 21:25).

Step 2: What inspiration means

Inspiration concerns the writing. The key sentence is 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” The Greek word theopneustos is formed from the words for God and for breath. Some translations say God-breathed. Scholars note that the word can describe the source of the writings, God as their origin, and that it says nothing by itself about the method.

A second text is 2 Peter 1:21: “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” The Greek word for moved is also used for a ship carried along by the wind. The picture is of human beings who speak and write, but who are borne along by the Spirit. At the time these verses were written, Scripture mainly meant the Hebrew Scriptures, with the writings of the apostles beginning to be read alongside them (2 Peter 3:15-16).

Step 3: How the two ideas relate

Three relationships are possible. A passage can record revelation, such as a speech of God to a prophet. A passage can be inspired without recording a word from God at all: a genealogy, a lament or a piece of practical advice in a letter. And revelation can occur without becoming Scripture, as in the sayings of Jesus that the Gospels do not record. Christians who hold to inspiration generally say that all of the canonical books are inspired, even though not every verse is a direct revelation in the same sense.

Roman Catholic teaching, for example, speaks of revelation as the whole of God’s self-communication, and of Scripture and Tradition as two ways in which it is handed on. Many Protestants speak of the Bible as the written word of God and as the final standard for faith. Orthodox Christians usually describe Scripture as one part of the living Tradition of the church, held within the church’s worship. These descriptions differ, but all three treat inspiration as a claim about the books and revelation as a larger matter.

Step 4: The strongest skeptical objection

A skeptic can put the objection fairly like this. Every religion has sacred writings, and each claims divine origin. The Bible was written over many centuries by many people in different languages, and shows signs of editing, borrowing and disagreement. A claim of inspiration cannot be checked by looking at the text, so it seems to be a claim of faith that depends on circular reasoning: the book is inspired because it says so, and it is believed because it is inspired.

Believers answer in several ways. Some point out that the claim is not made in one place only but arises from the experience of the churches who found these books to be life-giving and truthful. Others argue that the Bible’s claim rests on Jesus’ own use of the Hebrew Scriptures (Matthew 5:17-18, John 10:35) and on the resurrection. A third group, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, says that the church, not the book alone, is the context in which the claim makes sense. The objection is not trivial, and the answers do not compel agreement from someone outside the faith. A student should be able to state both.

  1. Can you describe an example of revelation in the Bible that did not at first take the form of a written text?
  2. Why might it matter whether a Christian says the fullest revelation is a person or a book?
  3. What does the word theopneustos tell you about the source of Scripture, and what does it leave unsaid?
  4. Which of the three relationships between revelation and inspiration was easiest for you to picture, and why?
  5. How would you state the skeptic’s circularity objection in your own words, without weakening it?
  6. What would count, for you, as a good reason to treat one book as inspired and another not?

Examples

Revelation without a book

Abraham is called by God to leave his country (Genesis 12:1). The call is revelation. Its first recipients had no written text. Moses wrote down the events centuries later, according to the tradition, and whatever the exact date of the writing, the revelation came before the book.

Inspiration without a new message

Paul’s letter to Philemon asks a man to welcome back a runaway slave as a brother. It contains greetings, a personal request and a few lines about money. Nothing in it announces a new teaching, yet the church has read it as Scripture because it shows the gospel at work in a concrete case.

A modern comparison

A historian might say that a famous speech is a record of a statesman’s convictions, which is something like revelation, and that the printed version is an edited text. The comparison is imperfect, but it shows that the event and the document are different things even when closely linked. (A constructed illustration, not a claim about any actual speech.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catechism teaches that God’s self-revelation is handed on through Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, which together form one deposit of the word of God entrusted to the church. Scripture is said to be written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with God as its author and with real human authors who used their own powers.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology generally holds that Scripture is inspired and is part of the Tradition that the Holy Spirit keeps alive in the church. It is read most fully in the liturgy and in light of the Fathers. Orthodox writers often avoid precise theories of how inspiration works and are cautious about treating Scripture as a separate authority standing apart from the church.

Protestant

The Reformers taught that Scripture alone is the final authority for doctrine, a principle called sola scriptura, and that the Spirit bears witness within the believer to its truth. The Westminster Confession begins with Scripture as necessary because general revelation is not enough for salvation. Protestants differ among themselves on how to describe inspiration.

Jewish

Within Judaism the Torah is understood as given by God at Sinai, with the Prophets and Writings as later books of prophetic or Spirit-led authorship. Traditional Judaism also holds an oral tradition alongside the written text. Many modern Jewish thinkers describe revelation more as an ongoing encounter than as a single dictated event, and views differ by movement.

Scholarly

Historians of religion study the Bible as a collection of human writings produced in particular settings. Scholarship as such does not decide whether the books are inspired, since that is a theological claim, but it does shape which models of inspiration are plausible by showing how the books were written, edited and collected.

Why it matters

Many arguments about the Bible go wrong at the first step because the words are not defined. A person who asks whether the Bible is the word of God may mean that it records revelation, that it is inspired, that every sentence is true, or that it should be obeyed. Separating revelation from inspiration lets you see which claim is being made and which evidence would bear on it. It also keeps the discussion honest, because the skeptic’s objections and the believer’s reasons can then be stated about the same thing.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Inspiration means that God dictated the words to passive writers.

Correction: Dictation is one model, held by a minority, and the Bible itself shows authors with distinct vocabulary, style and personal circumstances (Luke 1:1-4). Most Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant teaching speaks of God working through the authors rather than around them.

Misunderstanding: Revelation and inspiration are the same word for the same thing.

Correction: They are related, but one concerns God’s self-disclosure and the other concerns the writings. Revelation can occur by events or persons, and Christians say it reached its fullest form in Christ, not in a text.

Misunderstanding: Because 2 Timothy 3:16 says all Scripture is inspired, it proves the New Testament is inspired.

Correction: When the letter was written, Scripture mainly meant the Hebrew Scriptures, so the verse by itself does not settle the extent of the canon. Christians usually add other arguments, such as 2 Peter 3:15-16 and the recognition of the apostolic writings by the church.

Misunderstanding: Believers think the claim of inspiration can be proved like a mathematical result.

Correction: Most traditions say it is held on the basis of faith together with reasons, not as a theorem. A student should be able to explain the reasons without pretending that they are a proof.

Knowledge check

In one or two sentences, what is the difference between revelation and inspiration?

Revelation is God making himself, his will or his saving acts known, whether through events, persons or speech. Inspiration is the claim that God guided the human authors of certain writings so that those writings are his word for the church. Revelation is the wider idea, and some revelation was never written. Inspiration concerns the books themselves.

Name two New Testament passages cited for the inspiration of Scripture, and say what each contributes.

Second Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, which points to God as the source of the writings. Second Peter 1:21 says that holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, which points to human authors carried along by the Spirit. Neither passage explains the method in detail, and both mainly concern the Hebrew Scriptures as first written.

What is the difference between general and special revelation?

General revelation is what can be known of God through creation and conscience, available to everyone in principle (Romans 1:19-20). Special revelation is God’s self-disclosure in particular times and places, such as the call of Abraham, the giving of the law and, for Christians, the coming of Jesus. Most Christian traditions hold that general revelation is real but not sufficient for salvation.

State the circularity objection to the claim of inspiration.

The objection says that believers appear to argue that the Bible is inspired because the Bible says so, which assumes what it sets out to prove. Since many religions have sacred books that claim divine origin, an outsider cannot test the claim by looking at the text alone. A fair statement does not weaken this point.

Give one way believers respond to that objection.

One response appeals to the authority of Jesus, who treated the Hebrew Scriptures as God’s word, together with the claim of his resurrection. Another appeals to the witness of the church, which recognized these books as life-giving and true. A third points to the Spirit’s witness in the reader. Each response has critics, and none is a mathematical proof.

Think it through

  1. Is it easier for you to imagine God revealing himself through events or through words? What does your answer say about how you read the Bible?
  2. How might the claim that the fullest revelation is a person change the way a Christian approaches a book?
  3. Where do you see yourself leaning, toward a view that stresses the human authors or one that stresses God’s action? What worries you about each?

Independent assignment

Definitions in your own words

In your own notebook, write 300 to 400 words. First, define revelation and inspiration without looking at the lesson. Then choose one passage from the Bible, such as the beginning of Luke or Psalm 23, and explain in what sense it could be described as revelation, as inspired writing, or both. Finish by writing the skeptic’s circularity objection in a paragraph, and one reply. Do not send this to anyone or post it anywhere.

Further study