2023-10-10 The Human Authorship & Divine Authority of Scripture
2 Timothy 3 vv 14-17
- The Whole Truth of Scripture - human authorship and divine authority. We should not overemphasize the human or divine aspects of this relationship.
- Christianity contains some apparent contradictions / paradoxes:
- Jesus is fully human and fully divine
- God is three-in-one
- etc
- Scripture is the wod of God. But the human authors and contexts matter for our own interpretation of Scripture.
How does scripture refer to itself?
- Mark 12 vv 35-36 - Jesus' phrasing "David himself, in the Holy Spirit"
- 2 Peter 2 vv 20-21 - Peter's explanation of this dichotomy
- 2 Peter 3 vv 15-16 - Peter attests to God's inspiration of Paul's letters
- Paul attests to Luke as well 1 Timothy 5 v18 (quoting Luke 10 v7)
- Sometimes scripture is dictated to people directly by God, most often in the Prophets. Mostly other methods. For example, Luke 1 vv 1-3 describe Luke's process of investigation
Pitfalls of overemphasizing the divine authority of scripture
- Verse-picking - we may ignore context of longer passages to misinterpret a particular verse
- Biblicism - says all we can know is what Scripture says (though Scripture itself does not claim this Romans 1 vv 18-23)
- Reading our context into scripture - the historical and human context matters and even a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew are helpful
Pitfalls of overemphasizing the human authorship of scripture
- Reduces Bible study to academics. We can focus too much on the study, and miss the message that God is giving us.
- Can lead to rejection of divine authority
- We should consider the human context when reading. But we should also pray for divine guidance while reading scripture.