Commenting
on how Scripture is not human merely
or divine merely¸ but both, Dummelow
wrote:
The Human
Element. This can be
recognised (a) in the cooperation of human minds with the mind of the Holy
Ghost. The Psalmist who unburdened his soul in Ps 51 must have been deeply
conscious that he was himself imploring forgiveness, and like other humble saints
may have been scarcely aware that the Divine Spirit was prompting his prayer.
In the same way the prophets were perhaps often unaware of the full divine
meaning which God intended heir words to bear ultimately. When the Psalmist
says, ‘They pierced my hands and my feet’ and when Hosea says, ‘When Israel was
a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt,’ we need not suppose
that they were at all conscious that their words would correspond with the
experiences of the Messiah.
The human element can be recognised (b) in
the materials employed by the sacred writers, and in the manner in which they
are combined. The writers used various sources of information as modern writers
do. Thus in Nu 2114 we find a reference to a ‘Book of the Wars of
the Lord,’ and in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles several documents are quoted.
Even in the New Testament the writers felt at liberty to rearrange or modify
earlier inspired writings felt at liberty to rearrange or modify earlier
inspired writings, for St. Luke and St. Matthew both appear to have absorbed
much of St. Mark’s Gospel, and St. Luke has endeavoured to make the Greek more
elegant. (J.R. Dummelow, A Commentary on
the Holy Bible [London: Macmillan and Co., 1909], cxxii)
Elsewhere we
read:
THE DIVINE AND HUMAN IN THE BIBLE
There are two answers. First, that in the
Bible and divine and human are blended . . . We must not regard the Bible as an
absolutely perfect book in which God is Himself the author using human hands
and brains only as a man might use a typewriter. God used men, not machines—men
with like weakness and prejudice and passion as ourselves, though purified and
ennobled by the influence of His Holy Spirit; men each with his own peculiarities
of manner and disposition—each with his own education or want of education—each
with his own way of looking at things—each influenced differently from another
by the different experiences and disciple of his life. Their inspiration did
not involve a suspension of their natural faculties; it did not destroy their
personality, nor abolish the differences of training and character; it did not
even make them perfectly free from earthly passion; it did not make them into
machines—it left them men.
Therefore we find their knowledge sometimes
no higher than that of their contemporaries, and their indignation against
oppression and wrong-doing sometimes breaking out into desire of revenge. This
would not surprise us in the least in other good men who were we knew striving
after God and righteousness. It surprises us in the Bible, because of our false
preconceptions; because it is in the Bible we do not expect the actors to be
real and natural; because of our false theory of Verbal Inspiration we are
puzzled when the divine is mingled with the human. We must learn that the
divine is mingled with the human.
We cannot draw a line between the divine and
the human. We cannot say of any part, ‘This is divine,’ or ‘This is human.’ In
some parts, as the Gospels, there is more of the divine; in others, as the
Chronicles, more of the human. It is as a mine of precious ore where the gold
is mingled with the rock and clay—the ore is richer in one part than another,
but all parts in some degree are glittering with gold. It is as sunlight
through a painted window—the light must come to us coloured by the medium—we cannot
get in any other way. In some parts the medium is denser and more imperfect, in
others the golden glory comes dazzlingly through. It is foolish to ignore the
existence of the human medium through which the light has come; it is still
more foolish to ignore the divine light, and think that the tinted dome is
luminous itself, that the light of heaven has only come from earth. Both must
be kept in mind—the divine and the human—if the Bible is to be rightly
understood. (Ibid., cxxxiv-cxxv)
For a modern
scholarly discussion of the “Incarnational” model of biblical inspiration, see:
Peter Enns, Inspiration
and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament
