How do we know the Bible is the word of God?
a) The Verbal Dictation Theory. This theory states that every word, even the punctuation, is dictated by God, much as a business executive would dictate a letter to his secretary. This is often called “mechanical inspiration” or “verbal dictation.” Fundamentalists are often accused of subscribing to this method of inspiration, but only a small percentage of them actually do. The great weakness of this theory is that it eliminates any possibility of a personal style in the writings of the divinely chosen author—a phenomenon which is clearly observable.
b) The Inspired Concept Theory. In an endeavor to compensate for the dangers of the Verbal Dictation Theory, some conservatives have adopted the idea that God gave the thoughts to the men chosen, and left them to record these thoughts in their own words. Thus, only the thoughts, not the words, are inspired. This has been called “dynamic inspiration”. This explains the Bible’s humanity, but weakens its divinity. The mechanical theory deifies the human aspect of the Bible while the dynamic theory humanizes the divinity.
c) The Verbal, Plenary Inspiration View. This view holds that all the words written are God-breathed (2 Tm. 3:16). “Verbal” signifies the words, and “plenary” means “full,” or “complete,” as opposed to partial. Thus it is held that the words themselves, and all of them, are inspired. God gave full expression to His thoughts in the words of the biblical record. He guided the very choice of the words used within the personality and culture-complex of the writers; so that, in some inscrutable manner, the Bible is the Word of God, while being the words of men.
Charles Hodge has expressed the meaning of verbal inspiration well:
It is meant that the Divine influence, of whatever kind it may have been, which accompained the sacred writers in what they wrote, extends to the expression of their thoughts in language, as well as the thoughts themselves,—the effect being, that in the original autograph copies, the language expresses the thought God intended to convey with infallible accuracy, so that the words, as well as the thoughts, are God’s revelation to us.19
Inspiration, then, is the process whereby Spirit-moved men (2 Pt. 1:21), produced Spirit-breathed writings (2 Tm. 3:16). L. Gaussen gives us an excellent definition of inspiration in the following; it is: “that inexplicable power which the divine Spirit put forth of old on the authors of the Holy Scripture, in order to their guidance even in the employment of the words they used, and to preserve them alike from all error and from all omission.”20
It is recognized that here we are in an area of mystery. Just how infallible inspiration was brought about is something finite minds cannot comprehend. That there is a Divine side to the process cannot be denied. But that there is a human aspect is equally clear. God used men. We recognize both elements, but we cannot reconcile them. Perhaps the best illustration is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Christ has both a Divine and human nature. The Scripture also has a heavenly and earthly aspect. In both Christ and the Scripture the human side is perfect, as is the Divine. It is wrong to try to explain away the Divine Nature of Christ in order to understand His human nature, as the Arians did. It is equally wrong to sacrifice His true human nature in order to explain that He is Divine, as the Docetics did. So it is wrong to deny that the words of Scripture are both human and Divine in their nature.
The mistake is to try to explain the unexplicable, and to fathom the unfathomable. The means, or process, of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the results of this process is a verbal (the words), plenary (extending to all the parts equally), inerrant (errorless) and authoritative record.
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