Scripture and Incarnation

McGowan argues against Peter Enns but along with John Webster and also quoting Thomas F. Torrance, that it is dangerous to use an analogy drawn from the divine and human natures of Christ in the incarnation to speak about the divine and human aspects of Scripture.

McGowan says, “How can the Scriptures have a divine nature, since only God is divine? ... Scripture can share certain divine attributes but it cannot have a divine nature, because it is not God.” (Divine Spiration, pp120-121)

Of course we do not want to say that the Bible is God. The Bible is not a fourth member of the Trinity. Quite right. It’s hard to think that anyone would think that someone would want to say that! What are the names of these bibolators we are all supposed to be concerned about?

But we do want to say the Bible is the Words of God. The Bible is God speaking. Since God also created language and is sovereign over it, God’s words thoroughly reflect his character. God accommodates himself to human beings in his revelation (he speaks baby-language, slowly and loudly) but he does not have a speech impediment. God’s words are true because God is true.

No doubt it is possible to press the analogy between the incarnation and Scripture too far or to do silly things with it, but I still find it helpful.

The incarnation reminds us that something can be fully human and fully divine. We do not have to parcel out the humanity and the divinity of Scripture. Romans can be fully Paul’s words and fully God’s. We don’t need to take 2 different colour highlighter pens to it to mark up God’s bits and the apostle’s bits.

The incarnation also reminds us that humanity does not necessarily imply sin and error since Jesus was a perfect man. Likewise, human language is always subject to limitations (just as Jesus’ humanity was always located in space and not omnipresent) but that does not mean that it is necessary for the Bible to err to be human.