Friday, August 4, 2023

Robert Roberts on the Christadelphian Understanding of the Inspiration of Scripture

  

The argument may be brought to a focus thus:

 

1.—Christ rose from the dead: therefore, whatever view of the Old Testament Scriptures was entertained by him and the apostles must be correct.

 

2.—The view which Christ entertained and always expressed was that the Old Testament was of divine authority, and “could not be broken.”

 

3.—The same view was held by the apostles, and illustrated by them in all the uses they put the Old Testament to, and the allusions they made to it.

 

4.—The ground of this view was their conviction that these Scriptures were God-inspired—a conviction which they declared in terms without qualification.

 

5.—The inspired character of the Old Testament Scriptures is evident from their non-human style of composition, and from the nature of the topics which they select for presentation, whether in history, contemplation, or prophecy.

 

6.—This divine inspiration was a necessity for the objects divinely proposed in the writing of the Scriptures (whether in its historical, preceptive, or prophetic departments). A reliable exhibition of any of these elements would not have been possible without it.

 

7.—That the analogy of God’s whole work with Israel requires that the writing of the Scriptures should be His own work.

 

8.—That they are, in fact, owned by Him as such.

 

9.—That His authorship of them is not interfered with by the fact that human writers were employed in their literary fabrication.—His Spirit controlling and supervising their performance in a manner that secured the exhibition of His mind, and His mind alone, whether in the utterance of a prophecy or the quotation of a blasphemer’s document.

 

10.—That there are no insuperable difficulties in the way of this attested and inevitable view. Apparent discrepancies are mostly susceptible of explanation: and where they are not, it is for want of the knowledge of some element of the case that would supply the solution. (Robert Roberts, "In What Way Did Inspiration Act?," The Christadelphian 21, no. 246 [December 1, 1884]:549)

 

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