Which Books and Wordings? Two Problems with Divine Inspiration in British Evangelicalism

This Study

With the above in mind, it is the aim of this study to highlight these two problems in more detail in order to prompt a response from the affected organisations. As a former evangelical (who is still a ‘critical friend’ of the movement) I do not feel the need to solve these problems myself. The two problems are that the official doctrinal statements of several major British evangelical organisations do not specify (i) which books and (ii) which wordings were the products of divine inspiration. It is important to state that much of what follows is derived from an excellent article by McDonald. ¹ I have simply applied his arguments within a new context.

With regards to structure, I begin by reflecting on the meaning of the term ‘divine inspiration’. Following this, I then survey what is (and is not) affirmed in the doctrines of divine inspiration of the above-mentioned organisations, noting in particular that they do not specify which books and which wordings were the products of divine inspiration. Next, I examine the two facts which cause these problems in further detail. Finally, I close with a conclusion.

It is important to note the following limitations. Firstly, I recognise that it is not only the doctrinal statements of British Evangelicalism which are problematised by the Bible’s form—other denominations/movements and religions share similar issues. However, I have chosen to focus solely on British Evangelicalism for reasons of interest, focus, and space. Secondly, I have chosen to focus only on British Evangelicalism, as opposed to American Evangelicalism ² etc. Thirdly, I do not attempt to define what is meant by the mercurial terms ‘evangelical’ and ‘Evangelicalism’, and instead accept the testimony of those organisations which are reputable and self-identify in this way. ³ Fourthly, I do not think that the Bible’s form is the only matter to challenge a belief in divine inspiration. One thinks also of the myriad attempts to wrestle with content in the Bible which appears to be historically inaccurate or immoral, for example. Fifthly, this study does not engage with evangelical scholarship which may have provided solutions to address the problems I raise. Whilst I acknowledge that such scholarship exists, it does not seem to have influenced the official doctrinal statements surveyed below and therefore is beyond the concerns of this essay.

The Evangelical Alliance (EA)

We believe in […] the divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct. ¹³

The following key elements can be parsed. It is notable that the ‘Old and New Testament Scriptures’ are described as the ‘written Word of God’. This suggests that the Bible is of divine origin, having been metaphorically spoken by God. Further supporting the divine origin of the Bible is the claim that it has ‘supreme authority’, which it can only have if it is from God, who is Himself the supreme authority. The EA claim that the Bible is ‘fully trustworthy for faith and conduct’, which suggests that they affirm inerrancy (the belief that the Bible is ‘without error’). For if the Bible is ‘fully trustworthy’ then all of its claims must be without error. However, the extent of the inerrancy which they affirm is not clear from the wording of their statement. It could be that inerrancy only extends to matters of ‘faith and conduct’, i.e. what to believe (orthodoxy) and how to act (orthopraxy). ¹⁴ However, it may be that ‘faith and conduct’ is a hendiadys representing ‘all things’. Ultimately it is unclear. Moving on, the EA’s statement does not actually specify which books were produced by the process of divine inspiration. This lack of clarity really does matter, especially when it comes to the Old Testament, as I will explore later. In addition, the affirmation makes no mention of which wordings of the biblical books are authoritative, nor of the translations which translate such wordings authoritatively—again, points I shall return to later. The EA’s statement also does not make it clear if they affirm verbal divine inspiration. Furthermore, it makes no mention of in what way divine inspiration occurred. ¹⁵ In my opinion, it is not sufficient to affirm divine inspiration without at least specifying which books and wordings it applies to, otherwise the doctrine cannot actually be applied practically. Importantly, in making this point I recognise that I am in part breaking with the historic position of the Church, but the criticism still stands.

It is understandable that the EA’s doctrinal statement is limited and ambiguous when it comes to divine inspiration as the document is supposed to be wide-reaching, stretching across denominational boundaries to further the EA’s unifying vision. Indeed, by affirming the very basics of what it considers to be orthodoxy, it leaves the details up for questioning, meaning that those who agree on the principle but yet disagree on the details can be united in assenting to the Basis. Also, I recognise that the Basis is designed to be accessible; thus, it cannot go into the theological complexities of what it affirms without alienating many of the EA’s members who will struggle to understand it. However, divine inspiration has been so watered down here that its content is almost entirely lacking beyond the affirmation that the Bible came from God. This, I think, is a problem.

The Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF)

The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour. ¹⁶

The UCCF explicitly state that the Bible is of divine origin, for it is the ‘Word of God’, in accordance with the EA. The Bible is described as ‘inspired’ (adjective), which avoids the error of claiming that the biblical texts were the inspirees. Thus, ‘inspired’ here can be understood as meaning, ‘produced through the process of divine inspiration’. The UCCF claim that the Bible is ‘infallible’, which is a term that is historically synonymous with ‘inerrant’ ¹⁷ but which today has fewer fundamentalist connotations. They then claim that the Bible is a ‘supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour’. This could be read in several ways. Firstly ‘belief and behaviour’ could be a hendiadys for ‘all things’ (i.e., the Bible is fully infallible and fully authoritative in all things). Secondly, ‘belief and behaviour’ could be a restriction so that it is only authoritative for ‘belief and behaviour’ (i.e. the Bible is fully infallible but not fully authoritative—e.g., allowing for the superiority of the New over the Old Testament). Ultimately it is not clear. That the UCCF affirm verbal divine inspiration is, I think, implied by their affirmation that only ‘[t]he Bible, as originally given’ is inspired. What is signified here, then, is that only the original autographs are inspired, with the result that the task of textual critics is to reconstruct the original autographs (which has been the traditional aim of textual criticism ¹⁸ ). However, this idea is very problematic. We do not have any extant original autographs, thus any reconstructed original is impossible to validate. In addition, even the idea of an ‘original autograph’ is fraught with difficulties. ¹⁹ There may be a substantial difference between what one today might assume to be an ‘original’ of a biblical book and the literary edition which stood at the end of the composition process and became the authoritative basis for transmission. This is particularly true if that book was the result of what Tov calls a series of determinative originals. ²⁰ The problem becomes even more problematic if a biblical book is composite, containing multiple literary/oral sources—what then is ‘the’ original? Moving on, the UCCF make no attempt to define exactly which books of ‘the’ Bible are the product of inspiration, nor do they attempt to define the process by which inspiration occurred.

In sum: the UCCF present a doctrine of verbal divine inspiration which has been influential amongst intellectual evangelicals thanks to its work across British universities. However, its doctrine lacks the academic specificities which are necessary to address the disconnect between what it affirms and the form of the Bible. I do recognise, however, that complex doctrinal formulations could provide a stumbling block to the proselytisation of non-Christian students, which is of course a main activity of the UCCF.

The London School of Theology (LST)

We believe that the Old and New Testament Scriptures are God-breathed since their writers spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; hence, they are fully trustworthy in all that they affirm; and as the written Word of God they are our supreme authority for faith and conduct. ²¹

It is notable that LST do not actually use the word ‘inspiration’ in their doctrinal statement, however the concept is attested. The ‘Old and New Testament Scriptures are God-breathed’, which is a direct reference to θεόπνευστος in 2 Tim. 3:16. ²² Again, their statement does not define exactly which books constitute the ‘Old and New Testament Scriptures’, which is problematic. Uniquely out of the organisations surveyed, LST offer a brief explanation of the process of divine inspiration: the biblical ‘writers spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit’ (drawing upon 2 Pet. 1:21). Whether the biblical authors maintained their independence during the process is not clear. That LST affirm verbal divine inspiration is implied by its claim that the Scriptures, not the authors, are the inspirees. LST claim that the Scriptures ‘are fully trustworthy in all that they affirm’, which seems to be an affirmation of inerrancy; if a claim is ‘fully trustworthy’ then it must necessarily be fully true. They also add that the Scriptures are a ‘supreme authority for faith and conduct’. As with the UCCF, this could be read in several ways. Firstly, it could be suggesting that the Bible is only a supreme authority for faith and conduct specifically, or ‘faith and conduct’ could again be a hendiadys for ‘all things’. Ultimately LST’s stance on the authority of the Bible’s claims is unclear. Yet again, there is no mention of which wordings of the biblical texts are ‘God-breathed’.

In sum: LST affirm divine inspiration as a concept without using the actual word. Though they do attempt to explain divine inspiration using a prophetic paradigm, their doctrinal statement is lacking in several ways. In particular, the exact books and wordings which the doctrine applies to are not defined.

The Plurality of Books

The first fact which I wish to draw attention to is that there are multiple views in the Church today on which books should be in the Bible, with the implication that there are multiple views on which books are the products of divine inspiration. As McDonald phrases it, ‘for two thousand years the church still has not fully agreed on the full scope of its Bible—even if there is wide agreement on most of it’. ²³ The obvious example of this problem is the difference between the Protestant and Catholic canons. Catholics have a larger Old Testament than Protestants because they accept several ‘deuterocanonical’ books and additions which Protestants relegated during the Reformation. ²⁴ However, several Protestant denominations, such as the Church of England, accept these texts and several others as useful, but relegate them to a section called ‘the Apocrypha’ outside of the canon. ²⁵ The plurality of books prompts those who wish to affirm divine inspiration to define exactly which books are the product of divine inspiration.

Now, the plurality of books is not necessarily a problem, for a lack of unanimity does not mean that everyone is wrong. One could therefore ponder whether one of the current canons is correct and all others incorrect. But here one encounters a perennial problem: what is the criterion for determining whether a book should be in the canon today? It cannot be divine inspiration, for there is no objective means of determining whether the author of a book was inspired by God. The only rational criterion is tradition, i.e. the historic teachings of the Church. However, this is also problematic, for ‘the’ Church has never held a unanimous perspective. Importantly, I am not suggesting that was no agreement at all historically, but rather that there has always been agreement alongside considerable disagreement. For example, based on citations and references in the Church Fathers, by the second century ce the ‘core’ of the New Testament, i.e., the four Gospels and the letters of Paul, had become stable features of the Christian scriptures; but those books that were peripheral to this core continued to be disputed even in the fourth century. ²⁶ Thus, according to Eusebius, the canonical status of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, and perhaps Revelation, were disputed at this time. ²⁷ In addition, references to and the discoveries of extra-biblical books has shown that many early Christians willingly included such ‘non-canonical’ (from today’s perspective) books in their scriptural collections. ²⁸ Tradition, therefore, is also not a sufficient criterion, because what the Church believes is not a static entity; it varies by which part of the Church one focuses on at which point in time.

In sum: the plurality in the Church regarding which books are canonical raises the important point that there have been different views regarding which books were composed through divine inspiration. This in turn causes the implication that evangelical organisations that wish to affirm divine inspiration need to define exactly which books are the product of the process. Without doing so, the doctrine of divine inspiration is rendered ineffective because evangelicals will not have a grounded understanding of which books it actually applies to.

The Plurality of Wordings

The second fact to note is that there is no single wording for any one biblical book. Within biblical scholarship it is commonplace to draw upon multiple textual witnesses when studying any given passage. Indeed, this textual plurality is why the discipline of textual criticism exists. In certain cases, it may be clear that one wording is likely to be older than another, or that one contains a scribal error etc., though in many cases the precise historical relationship is far from clear and is often the source of scholarly debate. Because there is more than one wording available for any one biblical book, it is necessary for evangelical organisations that affirm verbal divine inspiration to define which wordings it actually applies to. In addition, any justification for such a definition must be compatible with the material evidence as regularly understood by textual critics, and not be a formal theory detached from reality. ²⁹

Let us consider some well-known examples of the plurality of wordings. The story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11, the so-called pericope adulterae) is one of the most profound stories in the Gospels and also provides a fascinating example. ³⁰ The story can be found in John 7:53–8:11 in a large number of manuscripts, but many of these date to the medieval period (Codex Bezae, c. 5^th century being the major exception). However, the story is also found in different locations in other manuscripts. ³¹ For example, after John 7:36, ³² after John 21:25 ³³ and, importantly, after Luke 21:38, ³⁴ and Luke 24:53. ³⁵ In addition, according to Eusebius, Papias of Hierapolis, who lived in the early part of the second century, thought that the story (or one very similar) existed in the Gospel of the Hebrews. ³⁶ More problematic, however, is that there are also a large number of early manuscripts which omit the story altogether. Of particular note are the majuscule/uncial Codices Sinaiticus (c. 4^th century), Alexandrinus (c. 5^th century), and Vaticanus (c. 4^th century). All of this information taken together strongly suggests that the story was not originally part of John’s (or Luke’s) Gospel but was a piece of ‘floating’ tradition that was later inserted into the Gospel, perhaps for safe keeping. ³⁷ Importantly, this is not to say that the story is historically unreliable, just that its position in John’s Gospel is. The complex textual history of the story of the woman caught in adultery raises the following primary question for evangelicals: which form of John’s Gospel is the product of divine inspiration, one with or without the story?

A further example can be found in the book of Jeremiah. When comparing the wordings of the Septuagint with the Masoretic Text, one finds that the former Greek version is considerably shorter (by about 3,000 words) than its Hebrew equivalent, and where it presents the same material it does so often in a different order. Discoveries of relevant manuscripts amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that both wordings may be derived from different literary editions (Vorlagen), rather than being variants within a single text type. ³⁸ The question then arises: which wording of Jeremiah was produced by divine inspiration and is the authoritative basis for interpretation in the Church?

One response to the variances between texts is to argue that such variances are inconsequential because they effect the meaning of a given passage very little. It is true that in many situations variances between wordings have little or no impact upon meaning. ³⁹ However, there are many other situations when variants are consequential and have a major impact on meaning. For example, in Deut. 32:8 (the song of Moses) reference is made to YHWH’s adoption of Israel. The NRSV writes, ‘When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods’ (emphasis added). Importantly, the translation committee of the NRSV decided here not to follow the wording of the Hebrew of the Leningrad Codex, which actually reads לְמִסְפַּר בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (‘according to the number of the sons of Israel’). The reason for the difference is that the committee followed a tradition which is attested in other wordings, such as manuscripts of the Septuagint, likely based on the assumption that the Masoretic wording found in the Leningrad Codex is a theological gloss designed to remove a henotheistic/polytheistic claim that YHWH was one among many deities who was granted stewardship over Israel by a higher deity. Here, then, the variance does affect the meaning of the passage significantly.

Another possible solution to the problem of the plurality of wordings is to affirm that only the original autographs of the biblical texts were the products of divine inspiration (so the UCCF). This idea leads one to affirm that the task of textual criticism should be to reconstruct the original wordings of the biblical texts, using the wordings which are extant in manuscripts today. However, as I have already shown, this solution is rationally indefensible.

An alternative solution is to affirm that God inspired every person who was involved in the composition of the biblical texts and not only the biblical authors, with the effect that the wordings which stand at the end of this process are authoritative. ⁴⁰ Thus, one could argue that the ‘final’ ⁴¹ texts, rather than the ‘original’ texts, are the products of divine inspiration. In this model, God cumulatively inspired all of those working at every level of the Bible’s composition and canonisation, which is a suggestion that has been made. ⁴² However, this solution is also problematic. Firstly, because, as I have already shown, there is a plurality of ‘final’ texts so the problem of identification remains, and secondly because it suggests that God would deliberately cause conflicting/contradictory processes, which I think is something that evangelicals would resist.

In conclusion, the fact that there is a plurality of wordings prompts those evangelical organisations that affirm divine inspiration to define the precise identity of the wordings which they believe were given by God. This is not just a hypothetical need, rather it is grounded in ecclesial practice: when a pastor is preaching from a passage, which wording of that passage should s/he expound as the product of divine inspiration? Without this being defined, the authority of the Bible cannot be applied in the world. Further complexity is added to this problem by translations of the biblical texts into various local languages. Thus, if evangelicals are not working with original language versions of the biblical texts, then it is also necessary for them to define which translations faithfully transmit the wordings given by divine inspiration. The alternative is to always remain one step removed from an authoritative wording.