Dogmatic Theology Vol 3 - Shedd - III - Bibliology concluded

Required reading

Dogmatic Theology Vol 3 by William G.T. Shedd (Available from Amazon or here) - Conclude Bibliology.

My summary  

Today we finish the chapter of supplementary material for Shedd's teaching on Bibliology.

We read about:

(i) inspiration of humans;

(ii) Old Testament ethics;

(iii) inerrancy;

(iv) homogeneity of thought and language;

(v) alleged contradictions in Scripture;

(vi) miracles;

(vii) canon.

What grabbed me

I loved this comment on inspiration:

'The divine and the human element in Scripture are erroneously supposed, by those who deny the inerrancy of the latter, to be merely in juxtaposition instead of blending and fusion. Mere juxtaposition would leave the human factor in its ordinary fallible condition, unaffected by the divine. But the mind of the prophet or apostle is represented as theopneustos (divinely inspired; 2 Tim. 3:16). This inbreathing of the human mind by the Holy Spirit lifts it above its common fallible condition and frees it from the liability to error which attaches to the uninspired human. An inspired human mind is in an extraordinary state by reason of the divine afflatus which sweeps it along (pheromenoi; 2 Pet. 1:21). If the relation of the two factors were merely that of juxtaposition, the Scriptures would be a mixture of the infallible with the fallible, as the rationalist asserts they are. But when the two are blended so as to fill the human with the divine, the product has in it no mixture of error. Both elements are alike inerrant; the divine originally in and of itself, the human derivatively because illumined by the divine. To suppose that the human side of the Bible contains error is to suppose the mind of the prophet or apostle to have been left in its common uninspired state when he contributed to its production. The attempt of rationalistic criticism to inject error into revelation by means of its human side can succeed only by assuming that the inspired human is the ordinary human and that the prophet or apostle writes like any common human author. This is merely the contiguity of the divine and human, not the interpenetration and inspiration of the human by the divine. On this theory the Bible is the product of the divine as infallible and of the human as fallible; in which case the errancy of the latter nullifies the inerrancy of the former. If the inerrant truth, which comes directly from the Holy Spirit, on passing through the fallible mind of the prophet or apostle becomes vitiated by the passage and is converted into error, the result is worthless. But if, while the Holy Spirit reveals the truth, he at the same time illumines and informs the human mind which he is employing as his human organ for communicating it to human beings and preserves it from error, thus making it the inspired-human in distinction from the common-human, then the product will be completely inerrant.'

No juxtaposition here!

Next week's reading    

Commence Theology (Doctrine of God) by reading up to the paragraph commencing 'VOL. I., p. 191. The Unlimited as well as the All is often put for the Infinite.' (page 111 of my edition)

Now it's your turn

Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.