Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1203. Inspiration and illumination are two words that get used almost interchangeably in casual church conversation, and the blur causes real confusion. People will say a sermon was inspired when they mean it moved them, or that the Spirit inspired their understanding of a verse when they mean he illuminated it. Scripture actually keeps…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1185. What is the book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel, and should its brief, tantalising appearances in Scripture make us curious about a lost inspired text? The book of Jasher is referenced twice in the Old Testament, in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18, as a source the biblical writers themselves…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1178. New Testament epistles make up a large part of the New Testament, thirteen from Paul alone, plus further letters from James, Peter, John, Jude and the writer to the Hebrews, and they contain some of the richest doctrinal teaching in all of Scripture, alongside deeply practical instruction for ordinary Christian living. Reading them…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1177. Old Testament narrative makes up a larger share of Scripture than any other single genre, the accounts of Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and his brothers, the exodus from Egypt, David and Saul, Elijah and the kings of Israel, and yet it may be the genre most often misread in ordinary Bible study. Christians…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1170. Concursive inspiration is the term theologians use for the way God produced Scripture through human authors without either overriding their personalities or leaving the outcome to human judgement alone. Moses, David, Isaiah, Luke and Paul were real people, writing in real historical circumstances, with their own vocabularies, temperaments, and concerns. Yet what they…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11. Divine accommodation is the term theologians use for a simple but important fact: God, who is infinite, eternal, and utterly beyond our full comprehension, has chosen to reveal Himself through finite, ordinary human language. He speaks of His hands, His eyes, His anger, His footstool, and a thousand other pictures drawn from human…