We have been hearing a lot about biblical inerrancy lately, at least I have; mostly because of the recent AAR panel involving a discussion by Michael Bird, John Franke, Peter Enns, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Albert Mohler — and this discussion bubbled up largely because of the book these gents co-authored on the subject: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). This topic, really, at least for North American evangelicals has become a kind of watershed; and so this book attempts to offer evangelical approaches to the topic (whether the respective views reject or endorse a various form of inerrancy), and to do so not just from a North American representation, but also a global offering (so Michael Bird).

A related doctrinal locus is one that has been getting less press than this hot-button issue; that is the doctrine of scriptural inspiration. Like the doctrine of inerrancy, inspiration has various and multi-valent ways of being articulated and approached. For purposes of keeping this bloggy (i.e. short enough), I will forego indexing the various ways into a doctrine of inspiration, and instead go ahead and offer the alternative that I affirm. The approach to biblical inspiration that I affirm, not surprisingly (for those who know me), is articulated by premier theologian [probably my favorite living theologian] (out of St. Andrews University), John Webster. Here is the rather elegant way that he articulates a way into a theological understanding of the biblical assertion of inspiration:

We may begin by speaking of the prophetic and apostolic words as divinely instituted signs in the domain of the Word. The human words of the prophets and apostles are an order of signs whose res [reality] is the free, gracious and self-explicating work and word of the triune God. Properly to attend to these word-signs requires us to press on to the res [reality] which they serve. The signs of Scripture are therefore not to be treated as simply signifying – for example – the historical and religious conditions of their production. Although  as human signs they necessarily do this, they do so only en passant, on the way to the matter which is the primary object of signification, namely, God himself ministering his Word to creatures.

To speak of these signs as divinely instituted is to say that they are brought into being by an impulse which simultaneously employs and sublates human authorship. This, we shall see, does not compromise the integrity of the text or authorship and authorial intention, but it does set those realities and activities in a movement; to say anything less would be to compromise the notion of revelation. This divine direction is such that the biblical signs bear the divine Word to their hearers. The speeches of the prophets and apostles are not simply a sort of linguistic wager, rather perilously reaching towards divine speech. They are the actual occasion and mode of its utterance, and the presence of its authority to judge, command and bless. And this, not by way of conversion or confusion – the prophetic and apostolic signs remain human, not divine or angelic words – but by way of the mystery of divine institution. Here, as Augustine puts it, God did not ‘broadcast direct from heaven’ but spoke ‘from his human temple’.

There, therefore, a relation between the words of the biblical text and divine speech. It is not that the sermo humana is just occasionally or accidentally related to the sermo divina, or that the divine Word is so lossely annexed to the fallible human word that all that we may legitimately discover in Scripture are traces of divine speech rather than God’s self-utterance. As a divinely instituted sign, Scripture is not a response to a distant Word, a Word which does not take determinate creaturely forms into its service; nor does Scripture signify the divine Word merely by traces of ‘excess’. If scriptural signs do, indeed, constitute the temple from which God makes divine utterances, then we need not be overzealous in separating divine Word and human service, or too pessimistic about God’s capacity to sanctify human texts. God so acts as to make the text capable, fitting and fruitful in the publication of his Word. This is part of what is meant by verbal inspiration: God’s Word is not at risk when spoken through the ministry of the prophets and apostles.

Second, the prophetic and apostolic signs are creaturely. This means that they are created: they have their being and function, not in and of themselves, but in the movement of divine institution which terminates in the hearing of the Word of God. In this, the prophetic and apostolic signs possess creaturely properties. Because the prophets and apostles are not angelic messengers, they instruct us through human words. ‘The human condition would be wretched indeed,’ Augustine notes, ‘if God appeared unwilling to minister his Word to human beings through human agency.’ But this creaturely agency and word are not purely ‘natural’, for in – not despite – the very humanity of these signs we are set in God’s communicative economy, within which the signs serve as the authorized exponents of the divine Word.[1]

This is very innovative of Webster, and yet within the aging of a very trad and classical vintage; which well may be why I like Webster so much.

I think the last clause from above summarizes everything previously articulated by Webster, quite well; when he writes: “. . . But this creaturely agency and word are not purely ‘natural’, for in – not despite – the very humanity of these signs we are set in God’s communicative economy, within which the signs serve as the authorized exponents of the divine Word.” Rather sacramental, eh? The sign is rendered by its reality, and in this communicative relationship genuine divine-human dialogue co-inheres, or simply happens. And yet in this conception of things, what Webster, in my view, successfully offers is a way into inspiration that places it in a proper Christian dogmatic order, and allows revelation to dictate the terms and sounds of its sign specially given in Scripture. Furthermore, what Webster does well, by way of emphasis, is makes clear that Scripture as God-given (inspired) is a predicate of revelation, and thus only becomes revelation itself as it participates in the reality it gives way to.

I know this may be rather abstract for some, but I hope it gives you something fruitful to dream about. Blessings.