(The following is my term paper for Systematics I at Reformed Theological Seminary, submitted Fall 2020. Formatting not retained.)
The doctrine of Scripture is one of the doctrines by which Christianity stands or falls. It is through Scripture where the supreme object of our devotion – the triune God – has revealed himself to us so that he might reconcile us to him. Scripture reveals to us “the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life”[1], which cannot be deduced from God’s creation alone. The doctrine of Scripture shows us that man does not know God through visions, dreams, or other rituals wherein man ascends to God, but that God graciously discloses his existence to us and preserves this disclosure for his people through the medium of the written word, which we call the Scriptures.
Because God has chosen the written word as his medium for divine revelation, Scripture necessarily involves the activity of God and the human authors of Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV) makes clear that all of Scripture is “breathed out by God” and yet features the distinct involvement of human authors in the diverse writing styles, genres, and contexts of the books of Scripture. This phenomenon is known as the “inspiration” of Scripture, and to speak of Scripture being the “inspired word of God” is to say that the words of Scripture, written by human authors, have their source and origin in the triune God.
The dual authorship of Scripture has been an uncontested truth for most of Christian history, but has come under increased scrutiny in the modern era. One theory of inspiration, known as “verbal plenary inspiration”, seeks to harmonize how Scripture can be the words of God and the words of human authors at the same time, but has fallen out of favor as modern theories attempt to re-define the roles and involvement of God and man in authoring Scripture. This paper will seek to defend the claim that the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration, although often discarded in attempts to protect or emphasize the divine and/or human authorship of Scripture, is the only theory of Scripture’s inspiration that can properly safeguard both God and man as being the authors of Scripture. This paper will begin by defining inspiration’s place in the loci of systematic theology, then move to examining the basic claims and features of verbal plenary inspiration (including a brief sketch of the theory’s historical development), and contrasting and defending verbal plenary inspiration against modern, rival theories of the inspiration of Scripture.
Inspiration’s Location in Christian Theology
The doctrine of Scripture is a significant doctrine within Christian theology, and like the rest of Christian doctrine, the doctrine of Scripture is shaped from the conclusions of surrounding doctrines; what you conclude about the inspiration of Scripture will provide implications for other doctrines as well.[2] We will begin by outlining inspiration’s place within the loci of systematic theology and by delineating the theological boundaries of this paper.
The doctrine of Scripture is traditionally one of the first doctrines considered within systematic theology, alongside the doctrine of God and the doctrine of revelation. There are two approaches to ordering these doctrines in relation to each other. For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith begins with the doctrine of Scripture (with the doctrine of revelation treated in the same chapter), while the Belgic Confession of Faith and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion begin with the doctrine of God and then move to the doctrine of Scripture as a subset of the doctrine of revelation. There are merits to both orderings: beginning with the doctrine of Scripture priorities the epistemic foundation for Christian theology (how and where do we know anything about God?) while beginning with the doctrine of God and/or revelation prioritizes the ontological foundation of Christian theology (who is this God who has revealed himself to us?). Although it is impossible to discuss the doctrine of Scripture without speaking about the character of the triune God and of his work in revelation in the process, this paper will narrowly focus on the doctrine of Scripture as much as possible.
As with many other doctrines in theology, there are many sub-topics within the doctrine of Scripture. Within the doctrine of Scripture includes the subjects of Scripture’s canon (which writings are considered Scripture and is more Scripture still being added?), the inerrancy of Scripture (is there any error within Scripture?), the clarity of Scripture (is Scripture clear on it’s most important teachings?), the sufficiency of Scripture (are the writings of Scripture enough or do we need to supplement Scripture with other writings?), and more. Although the inspiration of Scripture is intimately connected to these surrounding topics, this paper will attempt to isolate the inspiration of Scripture and examine the history and features of one particular theory of inspiration and demonstrate it’s superiority over modern rival theories.
Verbal Plenary Inspiration: Definition and History
Verbal plenary inspiration (sometimes listed as plenary verbal inspiration) is a theory that explains the inspiration of Scripture, with the words “verbal” and “plenary” describing the scope and precision of inspiration, which is “a divine act that creates an identity between a divine word and a human word.”[3] Michael Horton summarizes this theory by saying Scripture “is inspired in its words as well as it’s meaning”[4], although this summary is often misunderstood and hotly debated. We will begin by examining the words “plenary” and “verbal”, which will inform our understanding of God’s act of inspiration.
The word “plenary” defines the scope and extent of Scripture’s inspiration, and essentially means “full”,[5] and is summarized in Paul’s classification of “all Scripture” as being “breathed out by God” in 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV). Although the words “verbal” and “inspiration” are often given more attention when discussing verbal plenary inspiration, the plenary or “full” inspiration of Scripture is just as important as the other concepts in the inspiration of Scripture. If all of Scripture is not inspired, then it follows that either none of Scripture is inspired or only parts of Scripture are inspired, resulting in canon-within-a-canon views of Scripture. A popular example of this is the “red letter” movement within liberal evangelicalism, which elevates the words of Jesus in the Gospels (commonly printed with a red font in modern Bibles) above the rest of the words of Scripture, suggesting that the words of Christ spoken in the Gospel narratives are more divine and inspired than the rest of the words of Scripture. Geerhardus Vos summarizes the significance of Scripture’s plenary inspiration when he writes, “the conception of partial inspiration is a modern figment having no support in what the Bible teaches about its own make-up. . . .consulting the consciousness of the Scriptures themselves in this matter, we soon learn that it is either ‘plenary inspiration’ or nothing at all.”[6]
If “plenary” refers to the scope and extent of inspiration, the word “verbal” refers to the content of inspiration and the precision of that content. As John Frame notes, “verbal inspiration means that the words of Scripture, not only the ideas or the biblical writers, are God’s Word.[7]” Verbal inspiration affirms that God supplied both the thoughts and ideas of Scripture and the very words to communicate those thoughts and ideas, and that those words are just as much the words of the author as they are of God. Furthermore, verbal inspiration extends not only the words and the units of speech formed by the words, but also to the purpose and intention of the speech as a type of action. Just as God spoke the universe into existence, God accomplishes other actions though his speech as well; as Timothy Ward states, “to encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action.”[8] In describing modern speech-act theory, Michael Horton writes, ““we use words to get things done. Of course, sometimes that includes referring, describing, proposing, and asserting, but we do a host of other things through speech, such as promising, warning, surprising, questioning, comforting, and so forth”,[9]and through Scripture God uses his words to accomplish these very same actions, and the actions fall under the purview of inspiration just as much as the words themselves. As the latter part of 2 Timothy 3:16 makes clear, all of Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”, with the express intention “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” God’s purpose for Scripture is as important as the content of Scripture itself, and his work of inspiring Scripture extends all the way down to the words used to convey the ideas that accomplish God’s desire to save and sanctify a covenant people for him.
As discussed above, inspiration is “a divine act that creates an identity between a divine word and a human word[10]”, or as Article VII of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy defines it, “the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word.“[11] The Scriptural grounding for this idea is found in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:16-21, with the former verse affirming the totality of Scripture as being “breathed out by God” and the latter verse denying that the words of Scripture originated in the will of the human authors, but that the human authors spoke the words of God “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The emphasis in both verses is Scripture’s origination in the creative action of God himself; the word theopneustos in 2 Timothy 3:16 literally means “God breathed”,[12] and the verb phero used in 2 Peter 1:16-19 is translated with several words (“borne” in vv 17-18, “produced” and “carried” in verse 21) that all have their reference in God’s action of revelation to the prophets and apostles.[13] Significantly, neither verse offers much in describing the “mechanism” of how exactly “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”, only emphasizing that however this occurred, it’s point of origin is with God himself; as Kevin Vanhoozer notes, “in confessing Scripture as inspired discourse, the accent is on the product, not the process.”[14] However, much of the modern interest in the doctrine of inspiration has been focused on defining and describing this mechanism of inspiration, and at this point a brief excursus into the history of the doctrine of inspiration will be helpful in understanding where and why this modern interest arose and what responses have been made in answering it.
A Brief History of the Doctrine of Inspiration
For the majority of church history, the topic of inspiration is given very little attention. As Michael Horton notes, “the common teaching of the East and West, Roman Catholic and classical Protestants, is that Scripture is not only in its content but also its form the Word of God written. . . .they simply identify God’s Word with the words of Scripture.”[15]Even within early Reformed theology, the Reformers were content to highlight Scripture’s emphasis of origin and bypassed any serious commentary on the mechanism of inspiration. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18thcenturies where an interest in the mechanism of inspiration arose as an interest of humanistic thought. In the 19th century, theologians such as Charles Hodge, Herman Bavinck, and especially B.B. Warfield answered this challenge not by mining the Scriptures looking for a previously-unnoticed account of inspiration’s mechanism, but from a thorough application of the Reformed doctrine of providence to the mechanism of Scripture’s inspiration, showing the Spirit prepared the authors of Scripture for their roles through ordinary, secondary causes,[16] and that God’s providential ordering extends to the whole range of activity and experience of the human authors. Bavinck identifies the “birth, upbringing, natural gifts, research, memory, reflection, experience of life”[17] as being factors in which God’s providential ordering guaranteed the authors of Scripture would write the words he desired while being fully the byproduct of the human authors themselves.
The view of inspiration that Hodge, Bavinck, and Warfield developed came to be known as “organic” inspiration, which is where God “used the organic complexity of human persons and the diversities among persons to communicate the complexity of his own personal word.”[18] Organic inspiration stands in contrast to “mechanical” or “dictation” views of inspiration where God dictates the complete words of Scripture or even overrides the will or actions of the human authors of Scripture in Scripture’s production, reducing the human authors to simple secretaries and downplaying the “humanness” of Scripture in order to protect the divinity of Scripture. W.A. Criswell offers the most explicit example when he writes, “each sentence was dictated by God’s Holy Spirit.… everywhere in the Bible we find God speaking. It is God’s voice, not man’s.”[19] We will examine the problems of this view in the next section of this paper, but note the contrast between Criswell’s view and the view expressed by B.B. Warfield:
[T]he Scriptures are the joint product of divine and human activities, both of which penetrate them at every point, working harmoniously together to the production of a writing which is not divine here and human there, but at once divine and human in every part, every word, and every particular…. On the other hand, no quality inconsistent with either divinity or humanity can be found in any portion or element of Scripture.[20]”
To summarize, verbal plenary inspiration is a theory of inspiration that claims that the entirety of Scripture, including the words and the meanings, ideas, and actions intended of the words, has it’s origin in the divine creative breath of the Almighty, who in his sovereignty providentially ordained all of the details of the lives of the human authors to where their education, experiences, and other circumstances would secure the production of the exact words desired by God, who did not, “in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, [override] their personalities”.[21] Thus, the Scriptures are, as B.B. Warfield said, “at once divine and human in every part, every word, and every particular.”[22]
Rival Theories of Inspiration
At this point it will be necessary to contrast and defend verbal plenary inspiration from modern, rival theories of inspiration and demonstrate how verbal plenary inspiration is the best theory that makes sense of the biblical data regarding the dual authorship of Scripture. In his book God’s Word Alone, Matthew Barrett details six theories of inspiration (verbal plenary inspiration being one of them), and we use this list as the framework for this section of the paper, beginning with theories that elevates the human authorship of Scripture and conclude with the one theory that elevates the divine authorship of Scripture.[23]
Intuition Theory
The intuition theory of inspiration posits that the authors of Scripture were exceptionally wise and gifted religious men and that, much like other ancient wisdom writers, were able to summon their wisdom and insight into the production of the texts of Scripture, which ordinary humans could not have produced. Naturally, there are numerous problems with this view. First, it denies any involvement of God in the production of Scripture, much less God as being the origin of the words of Scripture, and assumes that the human authors of Scripture possessed the ability to discover the spiritual truths of Scripture in themselves. Second, aside from overestimating the capabilities of the human authors of Scripture (implying a Pelagian view of human nature), it ignores the reluctance of the authors of Scripture to write the words they were commissioned to write, words that are often contained in Scripture itself. As Michael Horton notes, the prophets and apostles were ordinary men who express hesitation and distress at the thought of being given the words of Scripture, which is the opposite response one would expect if these men were gifted spiritual geniuses who were “inspired” to write.[24] The intuition theory is an essentially “agnostic” or “atheistic” view of inspiration, where one may praise the beauty of the writings of Scripture without acknowledging the existence of the God referred to in the Scriptures.
Illumination Theory
The illumination theory of inspiration is closely related to the intuition theory of inspiration, which claims that the human authors of Scripture were exceptionally wise and gifted religious men who wrote from their innate ability to discern the truths of Scripture, but unlike the intuition theory, the illumination theory claims the Holy Spirit worked alongside these authors to provide additional wisdom and insight to their writing. This theory shares many of the same problems as the intuition theory even if it is technically not an “agnostic” or “atheistic” view of inspiration. It still denies the origin of the words of Scripture being from God and overestimates the abilities of the human authors, ignoring their own self-admitted weakness and fear in writing Scripture. Whether the Spirit is involved (illumination) or not (intuition), both theories suggest that the contents of Scripture were discovered through the extraordinary efforts of human authors without any divine condescension on God’s part. To quote Michael Horton again, “rather than seizing, grasping, or mastering, [the authors of Scripture] are claimed, summoned, and commissioned to speak God’s words, and through their embassy God claims, summons, and commissions those who hear those words.[25]”
Encounter Theory
The encounter theory of inspiration is perhaps the most unique of the rival theories to verbal plenary inspiration, and perhaps the most sophisticated. This view posits that Scripture is not the Word of God in and of itself, nor even inherently unique among other religious textbooks, but that the Scriptures become the word of God when the Spirit uses the Scriptures to create “encounters” with God, who cannot be known through proposition or objective truth but can only be known experientially.[26] This position was pioneered by Karl Barth, who claimed (among other things) that God does not desire for people to know facts about him; he desires that they know him, personally and really, and only through his enabling of Scripture is God able to mediate encounters between himself and man.[27] Space doesn’t permit a deep examination of this position, which easily warrants entire papers on its own. However, this theory essentially denies the plenary inspiration of Scripture, only affirming that Scripture is divine when God is in the process of using Scripture to facilitate a divine encounter with someone (and, presumably, only in the specific portions of Scripture where the encounter is occurring in). Compared to the intuition and illumination theories, the encounter theory comes closest to affirming the dual authorship of Scripture, although it still falls far short of verbal plenary inspiration.
Dynamic Theory
Beginning with the dynamic theory of inspiration, we begin to see a stronger affirmation of the dual authorship of Scripture, although with errors toward elevating one authorship above the other. The dynamic theory of inspiration elevates the human authorship of Scripture over the divine authorship, and although the dynamic theory affirms the plenary inspiration of Scripture, it restricts the scope of inspiration to the conceptual ideas of Scripture, to which the authors of Scripture figure out the words that best express those ideas. This theory plainly contradicts 2 Peter 2:20, which says that “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation”, which would presumably include the author’s interpretation of a idea or concept given to them by the Spirit. It also fails to understand the word “Scripture” as referring to a collection of literary of text, rendering “all Scripture is breathed out by God” to referring to the ideas of Scripture and not the context of Scripture as a medium of the written word. Between dynamic theory and the final theory we will examine, we would find verbal plenary inspiration as being the theory that affirms the full dual-authorship of Scripture without prioritizing either author over the other.
Dictation Theory
Dictation theory, as has been discussed elsewhere in this paper, is a theory that posits that God dictated the words of Scripture the human authors, who functioned as secretaries simply writing down the words given to them by God or, in more extreme circumstances, God overriding the personalities of the authors to make them write the words he wanted. This view is best expressed in W.A. Criswell’s comment that “everywhere in the Bible we find God speaking. It is God’s voice, not man’s.”[28] Although the “secretarial” understanding of dictation theory is the most prevalent understanding of the theory, the idea of God “overriding” the human authors of Scripture to make them produce the words of Scripture is significant enough to warrant an explicit denial in Article VIII of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy.
Dictation theory affirms the plenary inspiration of Scripture and affirms, in a sense, the full verbal inspiration of Scripture. However, dictation theory’s understanding of the verbal inspiration of Scripture differs significantly from verbal plenary inspiration in that it significantly minimizes or even outright denies the human authorship of Scripture, which creates several additional problems in the name of protecting or elevating God’s role in the authorship of Scripture. A surface level issue is that dictation theory cannot explain the different writing style and voices in Scripture, which would be unnecessary if all the books of Scripture were given by God’s direct dictation. This raises the further issue that dictation theory essentially renders the authors of Scripture as negligible or inconsequential factors in Scripture’s production – as E.J. Young notes, Hosea and Amos were two prophets who were inspired by the same Spirit but whose life experience and circumstances produced vastly different books that were part of the message God intended to communicate to his people. Just as John couldn’t have written the Pauline epistles, Amos couldn’t have written Hosea.[29] This leads to the most significant issue with dictation theory – an implicit denial of the Reformed understanding of the doctrine of providence. Dictation theory assumes that God is unable to secure his intended words of Scripture apart from him supplying every single word himself, and that human involvement in Scripture’s production is an obstacle that threatened God’s ability to convey his intended words. John Frame answers this objection well when he writes:
“These differences [in the human authors] were not a barrier that God had to overcome. Rather, they were God’s chosen means of communicating with us. God’s Word is complex and nuanced, multi-perspectival. God used the organic complexity of human persons and the diversities among person to communicate the complexity of his own personal word. . . .The Word of God is not only propositional content, but tone, emotion, and perspective. The final result is exactly what he wanted us to say, just as it would be with dictation, but with the diversity in meaning that comes from the involvement of human authors.”[30]
Dictation theory is the closest rival theory to verbal plenary inspiration, but it has several significant shortcomings that fail to take into account all the biblical data regarding the authorship of Scripture. While outnumbered by rival theories that elevates the human authorship of Scripture, it overcorrects too far in the other direction and becomes an equal and opposite error to understanding Scripture’s inspiration.
Conclusion
This paper sought to demonstrate that verbal plenary inspiration, although often discarded in attempts to protect or emphasize the divine and/or human authorship of Scripture, is the only theory of Scripture’s inspiration that can properly safeguard both God and man as being the authors of Scripture. Verbal plenary inspiration posits that Scripture is inspired in it’s entirety (plenary) and extends down to the words, thoughts, and intended actions of the text (verbal), and that Scripture is the byproduct of God and the human authors of Scripture writing the exact words desired by God through God’s providential ordering of secondary causes to cause the natural and organic inspiration of Scripture’s authors. While the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration is a technical and theologically rigorous doctrine, it offers immense comfort to the believer as well. This doctrine ought to lead us awe and wonder at the awesome and mighty power of God, confidence and comfort in his ability to accomplish his purposes using any means that he chooses and according to any timetable he chooses, and boldness to explore the full depths of Scripture knowing that its “humanness” is not a threat or obstacle to God’s direct revelation to his people.
Bibliography
Allen, Michael, Scott R. Swain, and Kevin J Vanhoozer. “Holy Scripture.” in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2016.
Barrett, Matthew. God’s Word Alone– the Authority of Scripture: What the Reformers Taught … and Why It Still Matters. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 2016.
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2003.
Criswell, W. A., Timothy George, and Denise George. Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman. 1999.
DeYoung, Kevin. Taking God at His Word. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity. 2014.
Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010.
Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016.
The International Council of Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Chicago, IL. 1978
Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust. 2007.
Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press. 2009.
Warfield, B. B., & Meeter, J. E. Selected shorter writings of Benjamin B. Warfield. Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. 1970.
Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition. Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1851.
White, James R. Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible’s Accuracy, Authority, and Authenticity. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers. 2004.
Young, Edward J. Thy Word Is Truth: Some Thoughts on the Biblical Doctrine of Inspiration. London, UK: Banner of Truth Trust. 1963.
[1] The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.6
[2] White, James R. Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible’s Accuracy, Authority, and Authenticity. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers. 2004. 43.
[3] Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010. 142.
[4] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 160.
[5] Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press. 2009. 84.
[6] Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust. 2007. 13.
[7] Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010. 143.
[8] Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press. 2009. 48.
[9] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 118-119.
[10] Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010. 142.
[11] The International Council of Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Chicago, IL. 1978.
[12] Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press. 2009. 80.
[13] DeYoung, Kevin. Taking God at His Word. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity. 2014. 36-37.
[14] Allen, Michael, Scott R. Swain, and Kevin J Vanhoozer. “Holy Scripture.” in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2016. 48.
[15] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.160
[16] Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press. 2009. 88.
[17] Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2003. 438.
[18] Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010. 142.
[19] Criswell, W. A., Timothy George, and Denise George. Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman. 1999.
[20] Warfield, B. B., & Meeter, J. E. Selected shorter writings of Benjamin B. Warfield. Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. 1970. 545.
[21] The International Council of Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Chicago, IL. 1978.
[22] Warfield, B. B., & Meeter, J. E. Selected shorter writings of Benjamin B. Warfield. Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. 1970. 545.
[23] Barrett, Matthew. God’s Word Alone– the Authority of Scripture: What the Reformers Taught … and Why It Still Matters. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 2016. 225.
[24] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 116.
[25] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 116.
[26] Barrett, Matthew. God’s Word Alone– the Authority of Scripture: What the Reformers Taught … and Why It Still Matters. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 2016. 225.
[27] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. 117.
[28] Criswell, W. A., Timothy George, and Denise George. Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman. 1999.
[29] Young, Edward J. Thy Word Is Truth: Some Thoughts on the Biblical Doctrine of Inspiration. London, UK: Banner of Truth Trust. 1963. 68.
[30] Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: PetR Publishing. 2010. 142-3.
That Gravley Guy 