p. 139 | INSPIRATION by Archbishop Pratt

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 26, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 9

INSPIRATION

By Archbishop Pratt

By the inspiration of Holy Scripture I understand that the Scriptures were written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who communicated to the writers facts before unknown, directed them in the selection of facts already known, and preserved them from errors of every kind in the records they made. * It is the inspiration of the original documents, which have long ago disappeared, that I contend for. That errors have crept into the long succession of copies, no one denies. Had Dr. Colenso, by his arithmetical test, detected any internal contradictions, all it would have amounted to would be to prove that our present copies have become, in those respects, more corrupted by transmission from hand to hand than was before known. But that the documents are unhistorical, or comparatively modern productions not to be depended upon as history, would by no means be proved by such a process.

A friendly reviewer of my fifth edition also thinks, that by claiming freedom from error of every kind for the originals of Holy Scripture, I have made an assumption which is absolutely gratuitous, and which imposes a formidable and needless task upon the defenders of inspiration. But to this I reply, that if all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and if this, as the context proves, applies, not only to parts of Scripture, but to all Scripture, the matter is settled; for it is not to be allowed for one moment that the Holy Spirit would either dictate or suffer error of any kind in what was written under his suggestion or superintendence. If, on the other hand, we suppose that some parts are inspired and other parts not, where is the line to be drawn? We must take our standpoint somewhere. It has always appeared to me most reasonable, and most consonant with our ideas of the Divine Being, to take up the position that Holy Scripture, coming as it does from God, is perfect, till the contrary has been proved; and to consider that the discrepancies among MSS. are to be attributed to the numerous host of transcribers through whose hands our present copies are come down to us, discrepancies which may be counted by thousands, but which by the acknowledgment of those who have hunted for contradictions, are of no importance, and are what can readily be accounted for by the natural fallibility of the most careful copyist.

The argument of the skeptic, against those who admit only a partial inspiration of the Holy Volume, is to me unanswerable, and represents the views I have always held on the subject. He says: “A book cannot be said to be inspired, or to carry with it the authority of being God’s word, if only portions come from him, and there exists no plain and infallible sign to indicate which those portions are. And if the same writer may give us in one verse of the Bible a revelation from the Most High, and in the next verse a blunder of his own, how can we be certain that the very texts upon which we rest our doctrines and our hopes are not the uninspired portion? What can be the meaning or nature of an inspiration to teach truth, which does not guarantee its recipient from teaching error?”

I would make every concession which a fair criticism of the text will allow; but to go further than this I think is dangerous. To place ourselves on the same low level with those who treat portions of Holy Scripture as fable, or, at any rate, as simply human, and to contend with them with their own weapons, as many attempt to do, is forsaking that high vantage ground which a believer in revelation can claim, and is trusting too much to our own prowess. To stand on the defensive, and challenge proof of the works of God in any single instance being at variance with his word, is the safest and the right attitude for us to assume. If we descend, we can do so only by making compromises; we must waive the miraculous and the divine; we must use arguments drawn in every case only from the ordinary course of things. * The learned rationalist Eichhorn has admitted that the different readings of the Hebrew MSS. collected by the indefatigable Kennicott (nearly six hundred in number) offer no sufficient interest to compensate for the labor they cost.

Dr. Moses Stewart observes: “In the Hebrew MSS. that have been examined, some eight hundred thousand various readings actually occur as to the Hebrew consonant. How many as to the vowel-points and accents, no man knows. But at the same time it is equally true that all these taken together do not change or materially affect any important point of doctrine, precept, or even history.”—Archbishop Pratt.