Inspiration and Incarnation
Being on staff here at URC has been good for me personally in a number of ways. One of those ways is that Chip and I are doing some reading and writing for pastor Kevin as he leads us through some material and trains us theologically.
We just finished reading and writing about “Redemption: Accomplished and Applied” by John Murray. Now we are reading “40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible” by Robert L. Plummer.
In chapter 3, entitled “Who Wrote the Bible – Humans or God?” Plummer ends by discussing how the duality of biblical authorship is similar to the dual natures of Jesus Christ. There are some ways that the union of human and divine natures in Jesus help us understand the union of human and divine authorship of Scripture. He quotes at length from a book by T.C. Hammond, which I was helped by and will thus reproduce below:
The living Revelation was mysteriously brought into the world without the intervention of a human father. The Holy Spirit was the appointed Agent. The written revelation came into being by a similar process without the aid of human philosophical abstractions. The Holy Spirit was again the appointed Agent. The mother of our Lord remained a human mother and her experiences throughout would appear to have been those of every other mother – except that she was made aware that her child was to be the long-expected Redeemer of Israel. The writers of the biblical books remained human authors, and their experiences appear to have been similarly natural, though they were sometimes aware that God was giving to the world through them a message of no ordinary importance (e.g., “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you…” 1 Cor. 11:23). Mary, the mother of our Lord, probably brought into the world other children by the normal process of birth. The writers of the biblical books probably wrote other purely personal letters which were not necessarily of canonical importance. More important still, no student should fail to grasp the fact that the divine-human personal life of our Lord is one and indivisible by any human means of analysis. On no recorded occasions can we say that in the one instance there was purely divine thought, and in the other a purely human thought. The two natures were united in one indissoluble Person. From the manger to the cross, the Lord must always be thought of and described from that point of view. Similarly, though the parallel is not quite complete, the student will be saved much unsound thinking, unnecessary confusion and, injury to his faith, by observing that in the Scriptures the divine and human elements are blended in such a way that in few cases can we, with any certainty, analyse the record to demonstrate purely human elements.
Praise the Lord for godly scholars who help us see and understand biblical truth! And praise the Lord for preserving his holy Word and maintaining both divine and human authorship, as he preserved the person of Christ in maintaining his full divinity and full humanity!
