God has chosen to reveal Himself in a written manner, although He has also revealed Himself through nature. However, the light of nature leaves men entirely without the knowledge of the way of salvation by the Son of God. “It is for certain that we can learn about God from nature,” however, “that there is a God may be known by the light of nature; but who and what he is men destitute of a divine nature have been at a loss about.”[1]
God has as well revealed Himself to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. “In the beginning was the word and the word was God” John 1:1.[2] Yet! In due time it was God Himself who was revealed to men. “Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” Hebrews 1:2.[3]
Christ is the ground and end of all scriptural truth. He is the one by whom all tings are to be tried. Christianity is not a man made religion: “In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion or rather to speak more exactly it announces itself as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions…”[4]
The nineteenth Psalm reveals two steps to this revelation. The first is had in what God makes known to all men—His power and divinity, Ps 19:1—6. Then there is that which God makes known only to His own people (Saving Grace) Psalm 19:7—14.
Revelation is the uncovering and communicating of this knowledge to His people. It is not an ethereal thing where God has merely written a book, but He has written something that was not previously known to the end of communicating special knowledge about Himself to his People.[5] “By revelation we mean that act of God whereby He discloses Himself or communicates truth to the mind; whereby He makes manifest to His creatures that which could not be known in any other way”.[6]
What other way could God choose to disclose truth to the mind, or manifest His word to His people. It has already been seen that nature can not effectively do this, it took special revelation. The uncovering of divine truth was the result, but what was the means where by God uncovered (revealed) truth to man.
Inspiration was the means to God revealing His word to His people. It “exists in the truth translated” and does not extend further then the original autographs.[7] Inspiration assures unto us that this is the Word of God, in order to get to this point God inscripturated His word. “…the inspiration of a translation…in limitation of verbal inspiration is offset by the intervention of conceptual inspiration. This does not mean that inspiration continues as an act, but as a quality.”[8]
The prophets for instance according to 2 Peter 1:21, were moved by the Holy Spirit to write. What was put down on parchment was inspired. Inspiration only extends to the original autographs, but God has continued to watch over his word. “In certain cases where the communication to prophet was in the form of a dream or vision, the narration and interpretation of that dream must be verbal.[9] This is especially true as say in one of Daniels dreams. First God communicated to the prophet in the form of a dream or vision and then he verbally gave him the interpretation of the dream.
There are numerous forms of God’s revealing Himself in the Bible. He supernaturally revealed himself as in Paul’s epistles. He gave pre—written manuscripts as in the Ten Commandments. He revealed Himself in the form of a theophany, such as the Angel of The Lord in the book of Genesis and again in the book of Exodus. He also gave His word through the foolishness of preaching.
There are various words that we hear or read that accompany inspiration. Some times Inspiration is referred to as verbal and plenarily inspired. Still others will talk of the scriptures as being verbally dictated then some theologians will talk about conceptual inspiration. Then there are those who do not believe the scriptures are inspired at all. What do all of these terms mean? Starting from the last term lets work backwards. It is popular today to just treat the bible as another book, notice I did not capitalize bible in this case, because that is what most modernists think of the bible. Conceptual inspiration just means that only the ideas or the “concepts” were inspired not the actual words. Verbal dictation should be distinguished from Verbal and Plenary inspiration, verbal dictation is the same thing as mechanical dictation, the actual words were dictated by God to the writer.[10]
Finally verbal and plenary inspiration extend first to the very words and then to all of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Verbal means that God inspired the words through the instrumentality of the author’s vocabulary. Plenary means that no where that you turn in God’s Word it is all His. “The adjective “verbal” is the term used to identify that view of view of inspiration which holds that the Holy Spirit directed the writer’s choice of words, so that inspiration did not consist in some vague, non—verbal communication of ideas which the writer was then left to formulate and record as best he could.”[11] Plenary means full or complete and is a description that includes all of the 66 books of the Bible.[12]
[7] Van Gilder, H.O., 9.310