Meditate Therein Day And Night

Inspiration is the process whereby God through the Holy Spirit communicated to man the exact words of His revelation. God is the source of this process. The Holy Spirit is the Agent of this process. The exact words are the result of this process. This results in a verbal, plenary, and inerrant inspiration. This is verbal in that the inspiration extends to the words. It is Plenary in that it extends to all of the words. It is inerrant in that the words are fully reliable and true. They are without error. Biblically and theologically three passages are of utmost importance. First, 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” God is indeed the very source of all Scripture. Secondly, 2 Peter 1:19-21, “Holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” God used the Holy Spirit as the agent for working in/with/by the human tool in order to produce His very Word while utilizing who He had made them to be. Thirdly,1 Cor. 2:10-13, “Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but (words) which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” God used the Holy Spirit to teach and ensure that what they were writing was exact down to the very words that were used.

Inerrancy teaches that God’s Word in the original autograph is without error, it is entirely reliable in all that it pertains to when all of the evidence is finally in and correctly understood in relation to each other. Inerrancy is the corrolary of Inspiration. Thus the same scriptural passages deliniated above are equally applicable. Since God says that it is all His word, and since God does not lie and His character is truthful, His Word is entirely truth, does not lie, and is in full keeping with His character.

The doctrine of the authority of Scripture says that since Scripture is God’s Word, and since it is inerrant and completely reliable, then it has complete authority over all. Theologically, authority is the implication of inspiration and inerrancy. Scripturally, John 10:35 states it quite succinctly when Jesus says that “Scripture cannot be broken.” He uses it here as the final and authoritative voice on the subject matter at hand. He is viewing it as God’s Word and thus refers to it as being impossible to break. It is the final authority.