Augustine of Hippo---in a letter to Jerome, Saint Augustine stated,
For it seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books; that is to say, that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to writing, did put down in these books anything false. It is one question whether it may be at any time the duty of a good man to deceive; but it is another question whether it can have been the duty of a writer of Holy Scripture to deceive. For if you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement as made in the way of duty, there will not be left a single sentence of those books which, if appearing to any one difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away, as a statement in which, intentionally, and under a sense of duty, the author declared what was not true” (Letters, 28, in NPNF, 1:251-52). In his AD 405 letter to Faustus the Manichean, Augustine provided an explanation regarding the ways a reader may have supposed there are “errors” in the extant copies of Scripture. He wrote: "I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand." Clement of Rome in the first century wrote, “Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them.” |
Origen |
"And likewise he becomes a peacemaker as he demonstrates that which appears to others to be a conflict in the Scriptures is no conflict, and exhibits their concord and peace, whether of the Old Scriptures with the New, or of the Law with the Prophets or of the gospels with the Apostolic Scriptures, or of the Apostolic Scriptures with each other. . . . For as the different chords of the psalter or the lyre, each of which gives forth a certain sound of its own which seems unlike the sound of another chord, are thought by a man who is not musical and ignorant of the principle of musical harmony" (Commentary on Matthew, 2, in ANF, 9:413).
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Athenagoras
Athenagoras gave one of the strongest statements of all the Apostolic Fathers and apologists on the inspired nature of the prophetic writings of the Old Testament:
"If we satisfied ourselves with advancing such considerations as these, our doctrines might by some be looked upon as human. But, since the voices of the prophets confirm our arguments—for I think that you also, with your great zeal for knowledge, and your great attainments in learning, cannot be ignorant of the writings either of Moses or of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, who, lifted in ecstasy above the natural operations of their minds by the impulses of the Divine Spirit, uttered the things with which they were inspired, the Spirit making use of them as a flute–player breathes into a flute."
"If we satisfied ourselves with advancing such considerations as these, our doctrines might by some be looked upon as human. But, since the voices of the prophets confirm our arguments—for I think that you also, with your great zeal for knowledge, and your great attainments in learning, cannot be ignorant of the writings either of Moses or of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, who, lifted in ecstasy above the natural operations of their minds by the impulses of the Divine Spirit, uttered the things with which they were inspired, the Spirit making use of them as a flute–player breathes into a flute."
James Arminius
In Arminius's disputation, "On the Authority and Certainty of the Sacred Scriptures," he outlines his doctrine of the divine nature and authority of Scripture (all headings and subheadings are added). He concludes: "So far indeed is the Church from rendering [the Scriptures] authentic or canonical that no assemblage or congregation of men can come under the name of a Church unless they account the Scriptures authentic and canonical with regard to the sum or substance of the Law and Gospel."
For Arminius, since Scripture has a Divine Author, then it is ipso facto divine in nature: "if the Scriptures be true, they are of necessity Divine," containing "the rule of our faith, charity, hope, and of the whole of our living." He flatly states: "Either He who speaks truly claims these attributes for Himself, and so His discourse is Divine . . . or (let no blasphemy adhere to the expression), it is of all foolish speeches the most foolish. Between these two extremes no medium exists."
Also, the unity and perfect agreement of all the scriptures together "excludes all doubt respecting their Divinity, when both of them are thus completely in accordance, since it is impossible for such a perfect agreement to have been the fabrication of an angelic or of a human mind." The Scriptures are the objective truth of God, the authority of which "binds the consciences of all those to whom the discourse or the writing is addressed or directed, to accept of it in a becoming manner."
In Arminius's disputation, "On the Authority and Certainty of the Sacred Scriptures," he outlines his doctrine of the divine nature and authority of Scripture (all headings and subheadings are added). He concludes: "So far indeed is the Church from rendering [the Scriptures] authentic or canonical that no assemblage or congregation of men can come under the name of a Church unless they account the Scriptures authentic and canonical with regard to the sum or substance of the Law and Gospel."
For Arminius, since Scripture has a Divine Author, then it is ipso facto divine in nature: "if the Scriptures be true, they are of necessity Divine," containing "the rule of our faith, charity, hope, and of the whole of our living." He flatly states: "Either He who speaks truly claims these attributes for Himself, and so His discourse is Divine . . . or (let no blasphemy adhere to the expression), it is of all foolish speeches the most foolish. Between these two extremes no medium exists."
Also, the unity and perfect agreement of all the scriptures together "excludes all doubt respecting their Divinity, when both of them are thus completely in accordance, since it is impossible for such a perfect agreement to have been the fabrication of an angelic or of a human mind." The Scriptures are the objective truth of God, the authority of which "binds the consciences of all those to whom the discourse or the writing is addressed or directed, to accept of it in a becoming manner."
Wesley |
On July 24, 1776, when members of his majesty’s government in the colonies found themselves annoyed at the writings of some men in Philadelphia three weeks before, John W esley also read something that annoyed him. Here is his journal entry for that day: I read Mr. Jenyns's admired tract, on the "Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion." He is undoubtedly a fine writer; but whether he is a Christian, Deist, or Atheist, I cannot tell. If he is a Christian, he betrays his own cause by averring, that "all Scripture is not given by inspiration of God; but the writers of it were sometimes left to themselves, and consequently made some mistakes." Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.
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As Al Mohler pointed out (Mohler, 48-49), even some errantists have agreed that inerrancy has been the standard view of the Christian Church down through the centuries. He cites the Hanson brothers, Anthony and Richard, Anglican scholars, who said,
“The Christian Fathers and the medieval tradition continued this belief [in inerrancy], and the Reformation did nothing to weaken it. On the contrary, since for many reformed theologians the authority of the Bible took the place which the Pope had held in the medieval scheme of things, the inerrancy of the Bible became more firmly maintained and explicitly defined among some reformed theologians than it had even been before.”They added, “The beliefs here denied [viz., inerrancy] have been held by all Christians from the very beginning until about a hundred and fifty years ago.” (cited by Mohler, 41)
“The Christian Fathers and the medieval tradition continued this belief [in inerrancy], and the Reformation did nothing to weaken it. On the contrary, since for many reformed theologians the authority of the Bible took the place which the Pope had held in the medieval scheme of things, the inerrancy of the Bible became more firmly maintained and explicitly defined among some reformed theologians than it had even been before.”They added, “The beliefs here denied [viz., inerrancy] have been held by all Christians from the very beginning until about a hundred and fifty years ago.” (cited by Mohler, 41)