The Person of the Holy Spirit - Table of Contents

prophetic in the wide sense of being a message from God. The work of the Holy Spirit is thus extended not only to the
aspect of revelation but also to the inspiration of the written Word.
The Scriptures are clear, then, both as to the fact of inspiration and as to the agent of inspiration, the Holy Spirit. The proofs
are abundant for both. As Prof. James B. Green says, “The Law and the Prophets, the teaching of Jesus and the preaching of
Paul; these are declared to be the Word of God. It has been estimated that the Bible in various ways asserts its own
inspiration some three thousand times. How often does the Bible have to say a thing before men will believe it?”8
2. The Extent of Inspiration.
An examination into the records of the Old Testament will reveal literature of all types: history, poetry, drama, sermons,
love stories, and insight into the innermost devotional thoughts of the writers. It is a matter of great significance that
inspiration extends to all of these kinds of literature, without regard as to form or style, without concern as to the origin or
the knowledge embodied in writing. The question naturally presents itself concerning the relation of inspiration to various
portions of Scripture.
Every attempt to fathom the supernatural is doomed to a measure of failure. Man has no criterion by which to judge that
which transcends our experience. Without trying to explain inspiration, an examination of its application may be undertaken.
At least seven types of operation may be observed in the work of inspiration.
(1) The Unknown Past. Scripture occasionally speaks with authority concerning the past in such detail and upon such themes
as would be unknown to man. In the early chapters of Genesis, for instance, Moses portrays events occurring before the
creation of man, therefore beyond all possible bounds of tradition. In Isaiah and Ezekiel, reference is made to events in
heaven outside the sphere of man’s knowledge and prior to his creation. It is clear that these narratives demand both a
revelation concerning the facts and the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiration to guarantee their accurate statement. Some
have advanced the idea in relation to the accounts of creation that these are similar in many details to pagan accounts of
creation. It is possible that revelation was given prior to the writing of Scripture on the subject of creation, and that men had
added to and altered this revelation in the formation of non-scriptural accounts of creation. The existence of other records of
creation and points of similarity of these with the Scriptures in no wise affects the inspiration of Genesis. Whether Moses
used documents or not has no bearing on the writing of the Scriptures. Whether documents were used, whether there was
knowledge of pagan ideas of creation, or whether tradition had contributed some truth on the subject, the work of inspiration
was necessary in any event to distinguish truth from error and to incorporate in the record all that was true and to omit all
that was false. Without doubt, the primary source of information was direct revelation, and the documents if any and such
traditional accounts as may have been known by Moses were quite incidental.
(2) History. A large portion of the Old Testament conforms to the pattern of history. In such sections, the writer is speaking
about events known to many and concerning which other documents not inspired may have been written. In many cases, the
writer is dealing with contemporary events in which the element of revelation is practically absent. How may inspiration be
said to operate in such Scripture? As in all Scripture, inspiration is not concerned with the source of the facts but only with
their accurate statement. In the record of history, the Holy Spirit guided the writers in the selection of events to be noted, the
proper statement of the history of these events, and the omission of all that should not be included. The result is an infallibly
accurate account of what happened with the emphasis on the events important to the mind of God.
(3) Law. Certain portions of the Old Testament consist in laws governing various phases of individual and national life. This
kind of Scripture is found chiefly in the Pentateuch, where the law is revealed in three major divisions: the commandments,
governing the moral life of the people; the ordinances, governing the religious life of the people; and the judgments, dealing
with the social life of the people. In some cases, the law consisted in commandments given by means of dictation, the laws
retaining in every particular the character of being spoken by God. In other cases, Moses charges the people as God’s
prophet and gives commandments which can hardly be construed to have been committed to him by way of dictation; yet
the commandments have equal force with other commandments. Inspiration operates in the writing of all law in the
Scriptures to the end that the laws perfectly express the mind of God for the people to whom they are given; the laws are