_4_The Relation of the Holy Ghost to the Holy Writers

Modern theologians speak as though this relationship were left indeterminate. They present it as a “difficult problem” for the solution of which no suitable formula has to date been found. Luthardt, for example, remarks: “On the whole, conservative theology is still searching for a formula giving expression to the ‘divine-human’ character of Scripture. Philippi, too, speaks of an ‘organic union of the Spirit of God and the spirit of man’ in the act of inspiration, claims a ‘Woriinspiration but not a ‘Woerterinspiration,’ and grants ‘the possibility of minor discrepancies.’ ”39 Again, when Grau says:40 “The boundaries between the divine and the human in Scripture cannot be determined mechanically and quantitatively,” his meaning is that it cannot be determined what in Scripture is to be attributed to the Holy Ghost and what to the human spirit of its writers. If this were actually the case, Horst Stephan would be right in again advising the theological world: “It would be better for us to abandon entirely the idea of inspiration, in spite of all modern attempts at a good evangelical interpretation of it.” 41 A Bible in which the boundaries between divine truth and human error would forever be uncertain would indeed be a fitting controversial subject for theologians of the school of Lessing, but would certainly not be the Book of which David says: “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7), and: “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Ps. 119: 105). But all this talk about the relation of the Holy Ghost to the holy writers being left indeterminate in Holy Scripture is contrary to the facts in the case. It is but an attempt to muddy the clear waters. The Scriptures define the relation of the Holy Spirit to the human writers of Scripture very exactly when, for example, they say that “the Lord” or “the Holy Ghost” spoke “by the Prophet,” “by the mouth of David,” “by the mouth of His holy Prophets” (Matt. 1:22; 2:15; Acts 1:16; 4:25; Luke 1:70), with the result that the Word spoken by them was not their word, but entirely God’s Word, or the Word of the Holy Ghost, (Rom. 3:2). In exactly the same manner Paul expressly declares the Word he wrote to be God’s Word, in distinction from the word of men (1 Cor. 14:37: “The things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord”), just as he says of the Word he had spoken: “When ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the Word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13).

With regard to the relation of the Holy Ghost to the holy writers we shall therefore have to say: God employed the holy writers as His tools, or instruments, in order that men might have His Word fixed in writing. In order to express this relation between the Holy Ghost and the human writers, the Church Fathers as well as the old Lutheran dogmaticians call the holy writers amanuenses, notarii, manus, calami, clerks, secretaries, hands, pens, of the Holy Spirit. Philippi rightly calls the derision heaped upon these terms by the neologists “senseless derision” (Glaubenslehre I, 177). For these terms are perfectly Scriptural as long as we observe the point of comparison (tertium comparationis), the mere instrumentality. The expressions state no more and no less than the fact that the holy writers did not write their own word, but God’s Word, ; and that is, as we have seen, the authoritative judgment of Christ and His Apostles. These terms should therefore not be subjected to ridicule but rather acknowledged as Scriptural.

That in this relationship the writers were not lifeless machines, but living, personal instruments, endowed with intellect and will and equipped with their own distinct style (modus dicendi), is evident from the very nature of the case. For God did not first kill or “dehumanize” Isaiah, David, and all the Prophets in order to speak or write through () them, but He carefully preserved their lives and their genuine human way of expressing themselves in order that they might in their speaking be understood by men. And precisely this, and only this, was most definitely taught and set forth by the Church Fathers and the old dogmaticians when they spoke of amanuenses, calami, etc. It is to be noted that the Church Fathers and the old dogmaticians had two things in mind when they used these phrases.

First, since God gave His Word through the Apostles and Prophets, or, in other words, since the Apostles and Prophets wrote not their own, but God’s Word, the Church Fathers and dogmaticians call the Apostles and Prophets God’s hands, penmen, secretaries, etc. Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum, I, 35: “While they [the Apostles] wrote what He [Christ] showed and said, it dare by no means be said that He Himself [Christ] did not write, since, after all, His members performed that which they learned from the dictating head. For whatever He wanted us to know about His deeds and words, this He commanded them as His hands to write.” Cyprian, Serm. de Eleem: “The Holy Ghost was the writer, the Prophets were His pens, to whom the Holy Ghost dictated what to write” (quoted in Quenstedt, I, 80). The old dogmaticians speak in the same way. Gerhard: “With good reason we call the Prophets in the Old Testament and the Evangelists and the Apostles in the New Testament the penmen, the hands of Christ, the letterwriters, or the clerks of the Holy Ghost, because they did not speak or write from their own human will, but , activated, led, impelled, inspired, and governed by the Holy Spirit. They wrote not as men, but as men of God, that is, as God’s servants and the peculiar organs of the Holy Ghost. When therefore any canonical book is called the book of Moses, the Psalter of David, the epistle of Paul, etc., that is done simply because they were the instruments, not because they were the principal cause.” (Loci, locus “De Scriptura Sacra,” § 18.) Quenstedt says of the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles of the New Testament: “Just as the Prophets and the Apostles were the mouth of God in speaking or preaching, so they also were the hands and pens of the Holy Ghost in writing. For, as the Holy Spirit spoke through them, so He wrote through them. For there is no difference as to the fountain of the spoken Word and the written Word. For this reason they were also called the amanuenses, the hands of Christ, the letterwriters, or clerks, or actuaries, of the Holy Ghost.” (Systema I, 80.)

But, in the second place, both Church Fathers and dogmaticians decidedly reject any mechanical or external concept of the “,” of the relationship of the writers to the Holy Ghost. The Church Fathers expressly repudiate the notion of the Montanists that the holy writers wrote in a state of trance. This also Cremer admits when he writes: “Miltiades, also an apologete, wrote, according to Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl. 5, 17, against the Montanists that ‘it dare not be maintained that a prophet speaks in ecstasy,’ Clemens of Alexandria declares ecstasy to be a mark of the false prophets and the evil spirit (Strom. 1, 311), and since Origen the rejection of the ideas of paganism is characteristic of the teaching of the Church Fathers. In absolute contrast to Montanism they refused to acknowledge in the prophets any unconsciousness.” (R. E., 2d ed., VI, 752.) Cremer refers also to Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Athanasius, etc., to the same effect. And as to the old dogmaticians, they utterly repudiated the false notion that the Prophets and Apostles performed only a mechanical labor when they wrote the Holy Scriptures. On the contrary, they show that the amanuenses performed their service willingly and fully conscious of the fact that they were writing God’s Word. Quenstedt (Systema I, 82 sq.), in explaining the (2 Pet. 1:21), states very clearly in what manner the will and the understanding of the holy writers participated in the composition of Holy Scripture. The amanuenses participated not according to their natural will, according to which man is actuated by God in the natural domain; nor according to their regenerate will, according to which all Christians are impelled by God to do good works; but according to the extraordinary impulse, according to which they were impelled by the Holy Ghost in their special calling and office, namely, as Prophets and Apostles, to reduce God’s own Word to writing (in literas redigere). Quenstedt shows in what respect the human will of the writers was by no means excluded in composing the Holy Scriptures, namely, not materialiter et subiective sumta, that is, “as though the holy writers had written without and against their will, without consciousness and unwittingly; for they wrote voluntarily, willingly, and knowingly.” And with the Church Fathers, Quenstedt, in explaining the term , rejects expressly the ecstasy. He writes: “The holy writers are said to be , actuated, moved, impelled, by the Holy Ghost; by no means as though they were in a trance (mente fuerint alienati), as the ‘enthusiasts’ say of themselves and as the heathen fable of such an ‘enthusiasm’ in their prophets. Nor by any means as though even the Prophets themselves did not understand their prophecies or the matter which they were to write, which was the error once held by the Montanists, Phrygians, or Cataphrygians, and the Priscillianists.”

Hence it is not historically true when Luthardt (Kompendium, 10th ed., p. 332) describes the orthodox doctrine of inspiration thus: “The relation of the Holy Ghost to Scripture is not conceived as taking in the personal mental activity of the Biblical authors (!), but as taking in merely the external use of the hands of the writers.” Cremer departs from the path of historical truth still farther when he says: “This doctrine of inspiration was an absolute novum. True, it lacked only the concept of ecstasy to be a renewal of the magic doctrine of inspiration of Philo and the old apologetes, which has been universally rejected by the Church in its opposition to Montanism. But the very absence of this concept only made the situation worse, for it reduced the magical inspiration to a mechanical one.” It is evident that Cremer had entirely lost control not only of the historical facts, but also of himself, when he wrote the above. The ridicule heaped by the modern theologians on the terms amanuenses, calami, etc., does credit neither to their intellect nor to their veracity. Philippi is using a mild term when he calls it “foolish.”