Research Breakthrough

I had the unusual happy experience this morning of typing out a quotation that I'm pretty sure might actually make it into the final cut of the Dissasertation I hand in.

In a book which looks pretty problematic, Kern Robert Trethbath suggests that some of the problems with B B Warfield's doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible would be alleviated if he thought of the Bible as a sacrament. I'm not terribly convinced by what Trethbath says here but I think it could be helpful to speak of the Bible as sacramental.

“Warfield presents an equivocal doctrine of inspiration. His account cannot determine whether inspiration is finally a mediate or immediate activity, yet he believes that a decision must be made between the two alternatives. He is unwilling to accept a doctrine of Scripture in which genuine human participation is allowed, both because such a doctrine does not explain the divine effects that the Bible exercises upon and within the church and because the (salvific) necessity of the Bible does not allow the patient to provide the remedy. But Warfield equally cannot accept a doctrine of Scripture which requires the immediate activity of God, because such a doctrine entails some form of mechanical dictation theory and the consequent utter passivity of the human instrument…. Warfield is caught between what were for him two empirical poles: the inerrancy and authority of the Bible on the one hand and the results of anthropological and psychological observations on the other…. he was unable finally to decide between them because he never considered the possibility of divine activity working through nondivine, and therefore fallible, means. That is, he did not consider the Bible itself as a sacrament, a genuine creaturely product which is at the same time genuinely able to convey the divine initiative.”

Trembath, Kern Robert, Evangelical Theories of Biblical Inspiration: A Review and Proposal (New York, Oxford University Press, 1987) p24