In a heading “What ‘inspiration’ does not mean,” H.D. McDonald, an advocate for biblical inerrancy (with respect to the autographs) and even Sola Scriptura, wrote the following which refutes the common eisegetical approach to Isa 40:8; Matt 5:18 and other like-texts:
Only a brief section can be given to a statement of what inspiration means negatively. The idea of the verbal inspiration of the Bibles does not mean the exclusion of all non-revelatory material. It is sometimes asked, Can wrong utterances be inspired? This question arises from a confusion between revelation and inspiration. Such statements as the mistaken view of Job’s friends, the letters of the heathen kings, the lies of Satan, the falsehoods told by Peter, were certainly not inspired on the lips of those who made them. But the recording of these words by the writers of scripture are the subject of the Spirit’s inspiration because needed by God for the context and perpetuation of his revelation. On this account they have been faithfully and accurately preserved.
Neither does the idea of inspiration mean that the Bible is totally preserved from textual corruption. God never works magically, although he does act miraculously. He has seen fit to put his revelation in the form of written speech—in a book—but he has not seen fit to exempt it from the normal processes which befall human means of transmission. Books burn; and from the fires the Bible has not been immune. Our Lord fed the multitude miraculously by multiplying bread; but each had to eat it for himself—and some, perhaps, with poor digestive organs. It was not magically put within them. It did not bypass the natural process. Immediately it is performed, any miracle wrought by God has its natural consequences which become subject to the normal conditions of human experience.
This, then, is the conclusion to which we are led. In stating that the Bible is divinely inspired it is necessary to conclude that it is verbally inspired. But to insist that it is verbally inspired is not to specify the method of inspiration. Verbal inspiration has nothing to do with a ‘mechanical’ notion. The inspiration for which we contend has reference to the whole Bible, as it has been reference to the words themselves. (H.D. McDonald, What the Bible Teaches about the Bible [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1979], 65-66, emphasis in original)
