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Lie #1. Please post where I said "each word was dictated by the Holy Spirit."

As you are the one talking about dictation, not me, you will have to answer that for yourself.

Lie #2.

If the words selected from the man's vocabulary were NOT the words God wanted then the words on paper are not God's word and you no longer have an inspired scripture.

 

Good question. If men chose the words, men make mistakes and therefore there are "inspired" mistakes in the bible. What poppycock!

Limited inspiration is sort of the opposite view of dictation. Whereas dictation sees Scripture as primarily the work of God with the human agent reduced to being a secretary, limited inspiration sees Scripture as primarily the work of man with "limited" inspiration from God. God guides the human authors, but allows them the freedom to express themselves in their works. This view asserts that while there may be factual and historical errors in the Bible, the Holy Spirit guided the authors so that no doctrinal errors resulted from their works. The problem with this view is how one can trust the Bible in doctrinal concerns when it is prone to error in its historical accounts? The reliability of the Bible is called into doubt in this view, and if we can't trust a literary work to get mundane details right, how can we trust it for weightier issues? This view also seems to ignore the fact that while the Bible is a story of redemption from Genesis to Revelation, it is a story told against the backdrop of human history, the doctrine being interwoven within the history. One can't just arbitrarily say that this account is factually inaccurate yet state it contains a kernel of doctrinal truth.

The final view, and the view of orthodox Christianity, is the view of plenary, verbal inspiration. The word plenary means "complete or full," and verbal means "the very words of Scripture." So plenary, verbal inspiration means that every single word in the Bible is the very word of God. The passage quoted above (2 Timothy 3:16-17) uses a unique Greek word, theopneustos, which literally means "God-breathed." Scripture is literally "breathed out" of the mouth of God. Furthermore, in another biblical passage, we see that “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).

This passage gives us a clue as to how God inspired the human authors. We see that men spoke (or wrote) "as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." The verb "carried along" is used to speak of a sail being filled by a wind and carrying a boat along the water, which is fitting since the Greek word for "spirit" is also used for "wind." When the human authors were putting pen to paper, the Holy Spirit "carried them along" so that what they wrote were the "breathed-out” words of God. This means that while the actual writings retain the personality of the individual authors (and that is obvious if you read the works of Paul compared to James or John or Peter), they contain the actual words of God.

In closing, it should be noted that there are some things that inspiration is not:

1. Inspiration is not robotic dictation. The personality of the human authors is present in each of the writings.

2. The fact that individual personalities are present in the writings does not mean that God's "control" over them was not perfect. The Holy Spirit superintended the process so that the words written were the exact words God wanted, despite the fallibility of the human authors.

3. Inspiration is limited to the original writings (autographs) not the process of transmission. We know there are minute transmission errors in the copies of manuscripts, but these errors are more grammatical than substantive.

4. The inspiration of Scripture, as we said, is to the verbal level, meaning that it's not just the ideas or thoughts that are inspired, but the very words. Moreover, we don't speak of inspiration of Scripture as we would the inspiration of a great work of literature or a work of music.

5. Finally, inspiration is limited to the specific works of the authors that are included in the biblical canon. Paul wasn't inspired, but Romans was. Furthermore, not all letters of Paul were inspired, but only the ones the Holy Spirit chose to preserve (e.g., see the Corinthian letters in which reference is made to two additional letters to this church of which we have no existing copies).

Biblical inspiration, in a nutshell, is the orthodox view of the church which says that the Bible is the plenary, verbally inspired word of God.

See: Inspiration and Authority of the Bible by Benjamin Warfield, professor of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. The last of the great Princeton theologians.

 

Now let's look at some of the various theories of inspiration that have been common in historic Christendom.

The Intuition or Natural Theory is held by the typical Modernist today, who believes that inspiration is merely a higher development of that natural insight into truth which all men posses to some degree. In other words, the Bible is merely a book by men with highly religious motivation, and is similar to a book about science written by men with highly scientific motivation. This theory, holding as it does that natural insight is the only source of religious truth, involves a serious self-contradiction; if the theory is true, then one man is inspired to utter that which another man is inspired to condemn. The Koran and the Bible cannot both be inspired Truth, as they contradict each other. This theory reduces moral and religious truth to the subjective - a matter of private opinion - having no objective reality apart from the opinions of men.

The Illumination or Mystical Theory regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the religious perceptions of the believer, the same in kind, though greater in degree, as the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. This position holds that the Bible is not the Word of God, but only contains the Word of God, and that not the writings, but only the writers were inspired. Of course, we must admit that there is an illumination of the mind of the believer by the Holy Spirit as we look into the Word of God, but this illumination only allows us to understand that which has already been written, and cannot impart new truth.

The Dictation or Mechanical Theory holds that inspiration consisted in such a possession of the minds and bodies of the Scripture writers by the Holy Spirit, that they became passive instruments, not participating in any way in the process of inspiration. This theory fails to explain the medical terms used by Luke, the military and sporting terms used by Paul, and the distinct differences between the books written by the various Old and New Testament writers. Of course, we must grant that there are instances when God's communications to mankind were in an audible voice, and took the form of spoken words, and that sometimes God commanded men to commit these words to writing for the edification of all men. However, the Dictation Theory would force this occasional event upon all of Scripture, quite apart from the evidence to the contrary.

The Dynamic or Conceptual Theory states that inspiration is not simply a natural, but also a supernatural fact, and that it is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man. This theory holds that the Scriptures contain a human as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of divinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human molds and adapted to ordinary human intelligence, and is thus conceptual (the idea, or thought, or concept is inspired) rather than verbal (the very words are inspired) in its view of inspiration. This is the view held, unfortunately, by many evangelicals today.

The Verbal and Formal Inspiration position was dealt with in the above post.

 

Excellent example of what I was saying. The word is "write" not "right." God, in His Sovereignty, would not have allowed that mistake to be made during the inscripturation process.

Do you believe in the Sovereignty of God? Could one of the writers have penned a word that God did not know in advance that he would choose? Was God Sovereign over His word or was He a mere bystander, at the mercy of the fickle choices of fallen mankind?

 

I think that should say "Your" point is invalid. It isn't, of course, but I understand your desperation.

Of course I'm not. You are avoiding the most basic of all Christian doctrines, the Sovereignty of God. Either He is or He isn't. Which is it?

 

Wow! Twice in one day I totally agree with Van! The universe must be out of kilter!