God is Amazing

I have recently been working on my second digest assignment, whose readings are covering the ideas of inspiration and revelation in a good bit of detail. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a pretty solid grounding in these areas, so not many of the concepts are entirely new, though the precision with which the theologians I have been reading articulate these ideas is quite stimulating.

I was particularly struck by something when reading through B. B. Warfield's chapter on inspiration in his The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Warfield had just worked through the human aspect of the inspiration of the scriptures, that God used men and their personalities to write scripture in such a way that we can easily distinguish between the style, idioms, and vocabulary of the several authors of the Bible. How does this perfectly human aspect of inspiration fail to color the message that God wishes to gives His people? Would not a method of dictation have been necessary to prevent the small size of the Apostle John's vocabulary from limiting the truth which God wished to reveal through this? This objection only persists so long as we limit our thoughts on the matter to the moment of inspiration itself. We must step back from our consideration of inspiration and remember that God is providentially ruling all that goes on in the world which He created. When He wished to reveal a certain part of His will to to His people, like the insight of Paul into the relation of the various covenants God made with man expressed in his epistle to the Galatians, He raised up such a man as Paul who would be perfectly suited to the message God wished to convey. Paul had been groomed his entire life for this purpose in a way that no earthly authority could groom someone for such a role. When God's providence is considered, the human personalities that show themselves in the record of scripture present no obstacle whatever to its complete authority and inerrancy! What a mighty and wise God we serve!