When you start talking like that; "oh, maybe it's aliens, okay? You know, mental telepathy!"
Look, you just don't want to go there. You just don't want to go there.
So let's get into some flawed ideas.
Traditional view, what I'll label as dictation or divine download,
or something that tries to avoid that, but still kind of sounds the same.
Doesn't really have a name, but I'll show you an example of it.
So I remember I was never taught as a young believer
that God dictated every word.
Like he's sneaking up behind the writer and whispering every line, every word
into the writers ear, but I was taught verbal inspiration, inspiration extends to each word.
Plenary inspiration; that means Scripture entirely in its fullness
(that's what plenary means) is inspired. Verbal plenary inspiration.
And so the question that would often come up is;
well, if God's not like whispering
the words to the writer, how do we affirm those things, and not fall into that idea?
Okay, so how do we do that?
Because if we don't, we're gonna get situations like the writers were in trances.
In other words, their mind is put on hold or shut down while God does his business.
The only thing the writer can do is listen to every word whispered
and just start writing.
Or he's completely overtaken, and you get what would be called in paranormal studies,
automatic writing.
You know, none of these things are good, because these ideas are most often used
in other religions, whether they're book religions or not, for channeling,
okay, and I've said many times, the Bible is not a channeled book.
Ok, you know, what you find in it defies the idea of channeling.
There's too much literary art going on in Scripture.
There's too much interaction, pinging.
Okay, one part of Scripture with another and another and another.
There's too much of that, because it's written over hundreds of years
by dozens of hands.
Okay. It just doesn't work, this whole channeling approach.
But that's kind of the feel you get, or the impression you're left with.
So we want to affirm again, that you know, we have verbal plenary inspiration,
but how do we avoid this?
Now, the evasive link here, I want to open this up. God gives every word without dictation.
This is from a well known systematic theology.
And it's one I like it's Erickson's Christian Theology, the third edition now,
and this is widely used in seminary classes.
So he says here: «It is our contention here that inspiration involved God's directing
the thoughts of the writers, so that those thoughts were precisely the ones
that he wished expressed.
At times these thoughts were very specific; at other times they were more general.»
Which is really weasel wording, to be honest with you.
Like you can have it either way.
It's not specific enough! It's not intended to be.
It's too broad. Oh, we'll see, some, you know, okay. Let me get over that.
«When they were more general, God wanted that particular degree of specificity
recorded, and no more. At times, greater specificity might have been distracting.»
So on and so forth.
So that, okay, he's talking about, not necessarily the words but the thoughts.
Okay. So if you go down here, he says this:
«At this point the objection is generally raised
that inspiration extending to the choice of words necessarily becomes dictation.
Answering this charge will force us to theorize regarding the process of inspiration.»
Okay, that's fair.
Then he says this, which sounds a lot like me: «Through all of life God was at work
shaping and developing the individual author.»
I'm right there with you, Millard. Got it.
Then he goes to the example of Luke, «Luke's vocabulary resulted from his education,»
bingo.
«His whole broad sweep of experience; in all of this, God had been at work preparing
him for his task.» And it's like, Yeah, you got it.
«Equipped with this pool of God-intended words.»
And it just like, oh, facepalm, you know, "God-intended words"?
So, like, if Luke would have used a synonym for a word he used, that's not okay?
How would God know? Unless he was like, giving him the words.
You know, okay, «God-intended words, the author then wrote...
Then, at the actual point of writing, God directs the author's thinking.»
See, again, now we're getting into this like, overcoming the author
to make sure he's not a screw up. Okay?
«This process is not greatly unlike mental telepathy.»
It's like No! What did you do to your beautifully crafted idea?
You just destroyed it!
Okay, enough of Erickson you know, it's just, this is what you get.
And again, this is a... Millard Erickson is no... he's probably retired now.
I mean he's a great guy. He's no rookie. He's very experienced.
He's in the evangelical orbit. And it's just like you're trapped.
Like you got to think a little more creatively here to avoid this other thing
because I can tell you right now in a postmodern world with all the weird stuff
that you get on the internet, The History Channel, when you start talking like that,
"oh, maybe it's aliens, okay, you know mental telepathy!"
Look, you just don't want to go there. You just don't want to go there.
So other vulnerabilities.
There's the assumed science intent, we get this all the time, it's well warned path,
you know, in the first year class and up, a few times already here.
You know, we're taught to think; if God's giving them the words, intensely moving,
doing mental telepathy, okay, that surely God knows this modern stuff that we know.
God knows lots of things beyond what we know, but he knows at least that,
so in his mental telepathy, we should be able to assume
that the biblical writers got this modern info. Okay.
You see how easy it is to take one thought, connected to the other thought,
and then draw a conclusion, and say; here, I just painted a bulls eye on the Bible for you.
Shoot at it at will. Let the bombardment begin. It's too easy of a target.
Uniqueness; everything in the Bible has to be unique.
Again, you've read the Enns' material for tonight.
He brings this up; how this troubles people, the comparisons, the similarities.