Inspiration
Inspiration
2 Timothy 3:16-17 assumes that Scripture is inspired by God, and lists its advantages. Depending on translations, it may also make the claim that all Scripture is inspired by God. However, the passage does not explain what this inspiration actually was, and there was no Canon of Scripture when the epistle was written.
2 Peter 1:21 speaks of how people were "moved" or "carried along" by the Holy Spirit.
"inspiration of God in the writers"
The BASF speaks of "inspiration of God in the writers". Acts 25:6 illustrates what "in the writers" might mean.
Verbal Inspiration
*INCOMPLETE*
See Jeremiah 31:37 for an example of belief in "verbal inspiration" leading to a Literal Reading of Scripture.
Plenary Inspiration
Inerrancy
After the Catholic Church proclaimed the doctrine of Papal Infallibility on 18th July 1870, according to which the Pope has the gift of inerrancy under certain circumstances, evangelical Protestants began speaking of the "inerrancy of Scripture", which in time overtook the "infallibility of Scripture". See a Google Ngram of the usage of these phrases here
See also the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. This statement recognised the significance of genre in interpreting Scripture and does not necessarily justify hyperliteral interpretations.
"Accommodation" and "Limited Inspiration"
Especially since the rise of Fundamentalism, many evangelical Christians have seen themselves as accepting plenary, verbal, inspiration of inerrant Scriptures — so the Scriptures themselves present a variety of challenges to them (see The Language of the Bible with Reference to Natural Things). In this extract from a paper called A Seismic Shift in the Inerrancy Debate, Norman Geisler (an author of the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy") and Douglas Potter argue against the view that the language of the Bible reflects the limitations of the times in which it originated, to the extent of including errors or false beliefs — a Christadelphian example would be Jesus' apparent recognition of demons. For them, this "accommodation" of error is belief in "limited inspiration".
Later, the doctrine of limited inspiration erupted at Fuller Seminary in the writings of Jack Rogers and Donald McKim (The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, 1979). It was responded to definitively by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) in the late 1970 and 1980s and also by John Woodbridge in Biblical Authority, 1982. Woodbridge identifies the fundamental concept used to support their view as “the concept of accommodation.” That is,
God accommodated Himself to our human weakness and limited capacity to understand His thoughts by communicating to us through human words. . . . authors of Scripture . . . did not reflect upon truth with the same categories of Western logic that are familiar to us. They were not concerned to describe historical and ‘scientific’ items with great accuracy. In consequence, what we moderns consider to be the small ‘errors’ committed by the Bible’s human authors do not detract from biblical authority, for the Bible’s authority is not associated with its form of words but with Christ and His salvation message to which the words point.
At the foundation of this movement to limited inspiration (or inerrancy) is the view of truth that says it is to be found solely in authorial intent. That is the mind of the author, rather than the correspondence between a truth claim (spoken or written) with reality. Carl F. H. Henry in his closing address to Summit II of the ICBI, Henry writes,
But in recent years a different type of theft has emerged as some fellow evangelicals, along with non–evangelicals, wrest from the Bible segments they derogate as no longer the Word of God. Some now even introduce authorial intention or cultural context of language as specious rationalizations for this crime against the Bible, much as some rapist might assure me that he is assaulting my wife for my own or for her good. They misuse Scripture in order to champion as biblically true what in fact does violence to Scripture. It is one of the ironies of church history that even some professed evangelicals now speak concessively of divine revelation itself as culture–conditioned, and do so at the precise moment in Western history when the secular dogma of the cultural relativity of all truth and morality and religious beliefs need fervent challenging.
If authorial intent alone is what constitutes truth, then only the intention of the author is authoritative. Hence, this opens the door to subjective guessing and unbiblical and extra–biblical sources being an authoritative in interpreting the text. Upon this historical influence and foundation, aware of it or not, limited inspiration has now manifested itself under the title of inerrancy. Now limited inerrancy has flourished among evangelical scholars. Such a position, regardless of its name, manifests itself in theology, history, science and so–called other unimportant matters.
— Why Jesus did not accommodate to false beliefs? [sic]
The theory of accommodation says that Jesus did not affirm inspiration but simply accommodated Himself to false Jewish beliefs. For example, the accommodationists say, that Jesus of Nazareth, being the Son of God, accommodated himself to the widely accepted false beliefs of his day. So, for example, because it was widely accepted in Jesus’ day that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Jesus accommodates this belief by saying Moses wrote it. Some limited inerrantists following the theories of negative higher criticism today, thinking they know more than the Jews of Jesus’ day, do not hold Moses wrote the Pentateuch. But Jesus being God incarnate must know the truth about the matter and therefore must have accommodated himself to the erroneous cultural beliefs of his day. This is nothing short of attributing error and deception to Jesus Christ himself.
Instead, to avoid charging Christ with error or deception one must say that Christ adapted himself to the cultural beliefs of the day. Indeed, as God incarnate, Jesus cannot be charged with any error or deception. All that Christ affirms must be completely true in earthly matters as well as spiritual matters, and yes even unimportant matters. But he certainly can adapt himself and his views to fit in the culture of his day without having to accommodate to an erroneous or deceptive belief. This means Jesus may have limited what he said about a matter or not even addressed a matter, indeed the text tells us Jesus only taught what the Father wanted him to teach. Further, Christ had no problem confronting erroneous beliefs in his day with the truth of Scripture. Consider that Jesus did not accommodate himself to many false Jewish beliefs (Matthew. 5:21, 28, 32; 15:1–9; 22:29; 23; John 2:13f.; 3:10).
In short, accommodation incorrectly holds that Jesus accommodated to human error and committed actual errors. He disguised truth, compromised God’s truth and used myth when truth should have been used. Truth in this approach is only what seems to be.
Adaptation, on the other hand, is an adaptation to the human’s limited understanding. Jesus spoke partial truths, disclosed truth in common human language, communicated God’s truth in understandable and anthropomorphic terms. Adaptation rests on the view that we can know God and what really is true, even though we apprehend it without completely comprehending it.
Some have suggested perhaps Jesus since he was human, was limited in knowledge and just ignorant on the topic. However, the New Testament clearly shows that Jesus had supernormal knowledge (John 1; 2:25). He said “truly, truly” for emphasis many times in John’s Gospel. Jesus emphasized His authority in saying “I say to you” (Matt 5:21ff.) to place his words alone side the Old Testament Scripture. At the end of his ministry on earth, Jesus claimed, “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28:18). Therefore, whatever limits there were on Jesus as a man in what he did not teach, there were no limitations on his authority in what he did teach (John 3:10).
— Geisler, Norman L. & Potter, Douglas E., A Seismic Shift in the Inerrancy Debate pp 10, 21-22
See also Critical Thinking and Bible references cited there; also Qms:"true science".
