The ancients needed myths or religious texts to explain the phenomena they faced. They needed a vehicle to understand storms and suffering, disease and death. Sacred texts, texts claiming to contain the words of God or of the gods, supplied the answers. Moderns, however, have science. Storms are related to gulf streams and weather patterns and water cycles. Diseases come from germs and viruses. Science explains the phenomena, pushing God (religion) or the gods (myth) aside. In Hegel’s worldview, one doesn’t look back. One just keeps pulsing ahead.

The Bible and the events it records occur in a particular place and time geographically and historically, which is to say the Bible is an ancient book. But the Bible also claims to transcend its age. The Bible as an ancient book speaks to the ancient world, but it also speaks to the medieval world, to the modern age, and even to the postmodern age. The reason? Scripture claims to be more than the words of ancient authors dispensing ancient wisdom for ancient people. The Bible claims to be inspired. As such, the Bible lays claim to transcending its age and speaking authoritatively to the modern age, the age of science and of reason.

The History of a Word

“The word ‘inspire’ and its derivatives,” B. B. Warfield informs us, “seem to have come into Middle English from the French, and have been employed from the first (early in the fourteenth century) in a considerable number of significations, physical and metaphorical, secular and religious.” Warfield proceeds to explain one of those religious significations, perhaps the chief one:

The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.²

Then Warfield takes us to 2 Timothy 3:16. This definition of Warfield’s and this text that he turns to first become the virtual template for discussing inspiration, though most are not as intrigued by etymology as Warfield was and consequently tend to overlook the French derivation of the English word. Second Timothy 3:16 is a good place to start, for in it Paul uses the Greek word theopneustos, translated “inspired” in many English versions. The word, as Warfield’s definition informs us, points to the divine origin of the text. While the doctrine of inspiration is well served by starting with 2 Timothy 3:16, the formulation of the doctrine by no means stops there. Second Peter 1:21 also informs us, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Alongside these two texts, Scripture is replete with its claim to divine authorship. Paul consistently makes the case that the authority of his words does not derive from himself; it derives from his office as apostle, one who has been appointed to speak for God (Gal. 1:11–12).