4. The relationship of the Holy Spirit to the writers of the Holy Scriptures.
The newer theologians want to leave this relationship undefined. They address this point as a "difficult problem" for whose solution the appropriate formula has not yet been found. Luthardt, for example, remarks: "On the whole, faithful theology .... . to find a formula in which it can express the 'God-human' character of Scripture. Philippi, too, speaks of 'organic unification of the spirit of God and the spirit of man' in inspiration, asserts 'word'-but not 'verbal-inspiration,' and admits 'the possibility of subordinate differences.'" 786) Further, when Gray says:787) "The boundaries of the divine and human in Scripture cannot be determined mechanically and quantitatively at all," he means that it cannot be determined what in Scripture is attributable to the Holy Spirit and what in it is attributable to the human spirit of its human writers. If the matter really stood like this, Horst Stephan would be right when he once again gives the theological world the counsel:788) "We would do better, in spite of all modern attempts at a good Evangelical interpretation, to abandon the concept of inspiration altogether." A Bible in which the boundaries between divine truth and human error remain uncertain would be a suitable object of dispute for theologians of Lesstng's school of thought, but not the book of which David says, "The testimony of the Lord is sure, and makes the foolish wise," and, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." 789) But all talk to this effect, as if the relationship between the Word of God and the word of man in Scripture was indeterminable,
786) Compendium 10, 1900, p. 338. By the way: In 1900, Luthardt, too, does not take any notice of the fact that Philippi has revoked "the possibility of subordinate differences", which revocation is published in the third edition of Philippi's Glaubenslehre, 1, 279, already published in 1883.
787) The detailed quotation in Baier-Walther 1, 102, from Grau's Entwicklungsgeschichte des neutestamentlichen Schrifttums 1, 11, 12, 18.
788) Glaubenslehre 1921, p. 52. The counsel is by no means new. Already Bretschneider wrote in his Dogmatik 4 I, 394: "in general, all inspiration of the New Testament, and especially of the words, appears to be something useless because it would presuppose a mechanism of instruction that is quite inapplicable to human souls."
789) Ps. 19:8; 119:105.
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is completely lacking in factual justification. They are to be described as an attempt to make clear water turbid. The Scriptures are very precise about the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human writers of the Scriptures, when they say, for example that "the Lord" or "the Holy Spirit" "by the prophet," διά τον προφήτου "by the mouth of David," διά στόματος Δαυίδ, "by the mouth of his holy prophets," διά στόματος των αγίων … προφητών,790) had spoken, and with the result that this word spoken through men is not their, men's, but wholly God's or the Holy Spirit's word, λόγια τον θεον, Rom. 3:2. As Paul expressly calls the Word written by him God's Word in distinction from man's word: "What I write to you are τον κυρίου εντολαί," [“the Lord's command”] just as Paul also says of his verbally proclaimed Word: έδέξασϑε ου λόγον άνϑρώπων, αλλά, καϑώς έστιν άληϑώς, λόγον ϑεοΰ. [“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”]791)
We must say, then, with regard to the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the writers of Scripture: God used the sacred writers as His organs or instruments to communicate His Word to men in writing. To express this relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human writers, both the Church Fathers and the ancient Lutheran theologians call the holy writers amanuenses, notarii, manus, calami, scribes, notaries, hands, pens of the Holy Spirit. As is well known, these expressions are quite generally derided by more recent theologians. But Philippi rightly calls this mockery an "incomprehensible mockery,"792) The expressions are perfectly scriptural as long as we hold the point of comparison (tertium comparationis), the mere instrumentality. The expressions say no more and no less than the fact that the sacred writers wrote not their own Word, but God's Word, λόγια τον ϑεον, and this, as we saw, is the authoritative judgment of Christ and His apostles. These expressions, therefore, should not be ridiculed, but accepted as scriptural.
That in this mere instrumentality relationship the writers are not dead machines, but living personal tools endowed with intellect and will
790) Matt. 1:22; 2:15; Acts 1:16; 4:25; Luke 1:70.
791) 1 Thess. 2:13.<w:t xml:space="preserve">792) Doctrine of Faith 1, 177.
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and equipped with a certain style (modus dicendi), lies first of all in the nature of the thing. For God did not first kill or "dehumanize" Isaiah, David, and the holy prophets all, in order that through them (διά) His Word might either be spoken or written, but carefully preserved both alive and in their genuinely human mode of expression, so that they might speak and write and thus be understood by men. And just this, and only this, has also been very emphatically taught and expounded both by the Fathers of the Church and by the ancient dogmatists, when they spoke of amanuenses, calami, and so on. It is to be noted that the Church Fathers and the old dogmaticians had two things in mind when they used these phrases.
First, because God gave His Word to men through the apostles and prophets, or — what is the same thing — because the apostles and prophets did not write their own word, but God's Word, so church fathers and dogmatists call the apostles and prophets God's hands, writers, notaries, and so on. Augustine, De Consensu Evangelistarum I, 35: Cum illi (the apostles) scripserint, quae ille [Christus] ostendit et dixit, nequaquam dicendum est, quod ipse [Christus] non scripserit, quandoquidem membra eius id operata sunt, quod dictante capite cognoverunt. Quidquid enim ille de suis factis et dictis nos legere voluit, hoc scribendum illis tanquam suis manibus imperavit. Cyprian, Serm. de Eleem.: Spiritus Sanctus erat scriba, prophetae erant eius calami, quibus Spiritus Sanctus scribenda dictabat.793) Likewise the ancient dogmatists. Gerhard: 794) Merito (prophetas in Vetere et evangelistas et apostolos in Novo Testamento) amanuenses, Christi manus et Spiritus Sancti tabelliones sive notarios vocamus, cum nec locuti fuerint nec scripserint humana sive propria voluntate, sed φερόμενοι ύπό του πνεύματος αγίου, acti, ducti, impulsi, inspirati et gubernati a Spiritu Sancto. Scripserunt non ut homines, sed ut Dei homines, hoc est, ut Dei servi et peculiaria Spiritus Sancti organa. Quando igitur liber aliquis canonicus vocatur liber Moysis, psalterium Davidis, epistola Pauli etc., illud fit dumtaxat ratione ministerii (because of the instrumentality relationship), non ratione causae principalis. [Google] Quenstedt says of the prophets of the Old Testament and the evangelists and apostles of the New Testament:795) Uti os
793) Bei Quenstedt I, 80. <w:t xml:space="preserve">794) Loci, L. de Script. S., § 18.
795) Systema I, 80.
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Dei fuerunt in loquendo seu praedicando prophetae et apostoli, ita quoque manus fuerunt et calami Spiritus Sancti in scribendo. Spiritus Sanctus enim per eos, ut dixit, ita scripsit. Neque enim alius vocis ore prolatae, alius scriptae fons est. Unde etiam amanuenses, Christi manus, et Spiritus Sancti tabelliones sive notarii et actuarii dicuntur.
On the other hand, both church fathers and dogmatists firmly reject any mechanical or external conception of the διά or the scribe relationship. As far as the church fathers are concerned, they — in sharp contrast to Montanism — explicitly reject ecstasy as a form of inspiration. Cremer also admits this when he writes:796) "Miltiades, also an apologist, wrote according to Eusebius' Hist. Eccl. 5, 17 against the Montanists περι τον μη δεΐν προφήτην έν έκστάσει λαλεΐν, [“‘it dare not be maintained that a prophet speaks in ecstasy”] Clement Alexandrinus calls ecstasy a characteristic of false prophets and the evil spirit (Strom. 1, 311), and since Origen the rejection of ideas originating in paganism has characterized the view of the Doctors of the Church. In the most complete opposition to Montanism, one did not want to recognize anything unconscious in the prophets." For this Cremer further refers to Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Athanasius, etc. And as for the ancient dogmatists, they are careful to reject the false notion as if the prophets and apostles had done only mechanical work in writing the Holy Scriptures. Rather, they take it that the amanuenses performed their writing willingly and with the full awareness and understanding that they were writing God's Word. Quenstedt, in his explanation of the φερόμενοι (2 Petr. 1:21), declares797) very clearly in what way the will and understanding of the sacred writers were involved in the writing of Scripture. The amanuenses were involved not only according to their natural will (naturali sua voluntate), according to which man is moved by God in the field of natural life, nor only according to their born-again will, according to which all Christians are driven to pious works by God, but according to the extraordinary movement by which they were driven by the Holy Spirit in their special calling and ministry, namely as prophets and apostles,
796) RE. 2 VI, 752.<w:t xml:space="preserve">797) Systema I, 82 sq.
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to set down God's own Word of God in writing (in literas redigere). But in the same context Quenstedt also takes note of the respect in which the human will of the writers was by no means excluded in the writing of the Holy Scriptures, namely non materialiter et subiective sumta, that is, "as if the divine writers had written without and against their will, without consciousness and unwillingly; for they wrote voluntarily, with will and knowledge" (ac si citra et contra voluntatem suam inscii ac inviti scripserint divini amanuenses, sponte enim, volentes scientesque scripserunt). And like the Church Fathers, Quenstedt explicitly rejects ecstasy in his exposition of the expression φερόμενοι. He writes: "The holy writers are called by the Holy Spirit φερόμενοι, driven, moved, impelled, by no means in the sense as if they had been absent-minded, as the enthusiasts claim of themselves and the heathen invent such enthusiasm in their prophets. Nor at all in the sense as if even the prophets themselves had not understood their prophecies or what they were to write, which was once the error of the Montanists, Phrygians or Cataphrygians and Priscillianists" (Dicuntur autem φερόμενοι, acti, moti, agitati a Spiritu Sancto nequaquam, ac si mente fuerint alienati, uti prae se ferunt Enthusiastae et qualem εν&ουοιαομόν in suis prophetis fingunt gentiles. Nequaquam etiam, ac si ipsi quoque prophetae suas prophetias, antea quae scriberent, non intellexerint, qui Montanistarum, Phrygastarum aut Cataphrygarum et Priscillianistarum olim error fuit.) [Google]
It is therefore an historically untrue assertion when, for example, Luthardt says with regard to the orthodox doctrine of inspiration:798) "The relationship of the Holy Spirit to Scripture is not conceived through the own spiritual activity of the biblical writers [!], but only externally mediated by the hand of the writers." Cremer departs even further from the path of historical truth when he says of the dogmatists' doctrine of inspiration: "This doctrine of inspiration was a pure novelty. It is true that only the concept of ecstasy was missing for the renewal of the mantic doctrine of inspiration of Philo and the old apologists, which was unanimously abandoned by the Church in opposition to Montanism. But the absence of this concept only worsened
798) Compendium 10, S. 332.
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the state of affairs by degrading mantic inspiration to a mechanical one." It can be seen that Cremer had completely lost control both of the historical facts and of himself when he wrote the foregoing words. The derision of the more recent theologians of the expressions amanuenses, calami, etc., does no credit to their understanding or to their sense of truth. It is a mild term when Philippi calls him "unintelligent".