Inspiration
The Bible, which is composed of the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the foremost source of our knowledge about God. It was written by holy men of God at the command of God, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for our instruction unto salvation. It follows from this that the Bible is God's Word, a true and correct expression of God's will and his way of salvation, and is also trustworthy in all its parts and possesses absolute authority in all that concerns Christian faith and conduct.
Axel Mellander (1860-1922), “What We Believe and Teach”
From Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations Glenn P. Anderson, ed. (1980), p. 135.
What...is inspiration? It is the Spirit of God taking possession of an upright and devout soul who listens for the voice of God, using him and all his mental faculties as his messenger. The writers of the Scriptures are not like water pipes taking water from a distance to bring it a long way and deposit it for you without you taking the trouble to dig for it, or to go and get it. Writers of the Bible are more like the mountain side, saturated with water which pours from its side in springs for everybody to come and drink. The Bible writers were saturated with Divine truth; then out of that saturation the truth sprang forth into utterance. That is inspiration.
Hjalmar Sundquist (1869-1949), The Credentials of Jesus (1930), p. 64.
There is an overwhelming agreement in the tradition of which we are a part that the Scriptures are inspired by God, but discussion continues as to the manner of that inspiration. The Scripture speaks of the fact of inspiration, using such terms as “inspired,” “God-breathed,” “moved by the Holy Spirit,” but does not develop a doctrine as to how inspiration occurs. Is it of the words and the word order? Is it of the writers? Does divine inspiration imply inerrancy? These are difficult questions which continue to be discussed within Evangelicalism and within the Evangelical Covenant Church. We affirm with the Bible that “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16). “The Covenant has not chosen to be more precise than this in stating its view of inspiration,” as indicated in Covenant Affirmations [Tract And Booklet].
Donald C. Frisk (1911- ), Covenant Affirmations: This We Believe 1981), p. 21.
Since the emergence of modem scientific thinking in the Western world, truth and certitude have often become identified, perhaps over-identified, with correct inferences from data. Truth is what can be proved to be so by a probable or necessary inference. The surety thus attained has been identified in the minds of many believers with the certitude of Christian experience. The Bible has been asked to be scientifically true in the same way as certain natural laws are said to be true. In the 1925 discussions between David Nyvall and Gustaf F. Johnson about the nature of biblical truth, which were printed in the denominational press (see Volume One, chapters 25,28), Nyvall suggested that the creation account in Genesis should not be considered biology; although true, it was not that kind of truth. But many of his readers were not happy with the distinction.
Such an equation between Christian certitude and the surety we may derive from the connections between natural phenomena is sometimes made by evangelicals anxious to establish the reliability of the Bible. I once heard Billy Graham tell about a flight between Korea and Tokyo in which landing in Japan was complicated by fog. It required the utmost instrumental precision to consummate. In commenting on this event Graham argued that just as the landing in order to be safe had to be scientifically certain with no allowable approximations or mere probabilities of any kind, so the biblical truth cannot admit any element of uncertainty. For it also functions as a carefully calibrated instrument of guidance. This illustrates the fact that as the demand for precision in science and technology grows and grows, so does the expectation for an analogous precision in scriptural truth.
The Bible is now asked to be true in a way never expected of it in the earlier centuries. The concern for verbal exactitude suggests that we are in effect asking for the veridity of the micrometer and ultimately of a super-micrometer. But if we are willing to be open to the historic facts as we know them, it must be obvious that the Scriptures, although trustworthy in their own way, do not attempt to offer us any such scientific reliability....
My intention with this brief and all too simple exegesis is not to discredit the passage or to reflect in any way upon the authority of the biblical word. Despite variations in the telling of the story which I cannot deny or explain away, the basic message is clear. My aim is rather to indicate what degree of verbal accuracy the early Church demanded of its texts in order to make them reliable testimony to the Gospel or to salvation history. We must conclude on the basis of what the texts tell us and the manner in which they are communicated that criteria such as verbal inerrancy could not have been demanded.
This circumstance does not dispense with the need for the greatest possible accuracy in the conveying of a text. If the New Testament tells us anything, it is that the witnesses gave a very high value to textual and historical veridity and consistency. According to Acts, the apostles were credentialed on the basis of their witness to the resurrection. What further qualified them for this witness was their presence with the disciples “all the while we had the Lord Jesus with us, coming and going, from John's ministry of baptism until the day he was taken up from us” (Acts 1:21-22, NEB). The witnessing is crucial and so is the reliability of the witnesses; even more so is the intention and the work of the Holy Spirit in informing the Church of the meaning of these things, in other words, in providing a primal hermeneutics of the saving truth.
Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), Into One Body...by the Cross, Volume Two (1986), pp. 317,318,319.
Two-Edged Sword
The Bible is no apothecary shop with all kinds of medicines but it is my prescription. It does not contain truths simply to be observed but truth to be obeyed. The biggest misuse of the Bible is to make its contents a neutral science. The Bible is a partisan book. It enjoins me to choose, to take a position for or against. And it is hardly possible to insult this book more than by putting a muzzle on its claims and its demands.
David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Abide in the Word”
From Herbert E. Palmquist, The Word Is Near You (1974), p. 112.
There was revival in those days. The law plowed deep furrows in the field of human hearts. People were separated into two camps and it was a matter of each and every person taking a stand. This ranting about Christian character without true conversion and new birth would never do then. The question was, “Is he converted, has he passed from death to life, is he in truth made free through Jesus Christ?” They acted high-handedly with these questions, they sought to pull people out of the fire, just as there is no politeness or fawning or soft speech when people are sleeping in a burning house. Do you remember the fire, the blazing zeal in the revival sermons in those first days? Nor did the fire cease to burn when the preacher said Amen; rather in the personal contact after the meeting he continued to drive in the nails of truth which had been included in the public message.
Now the preacher is often the polite gentleman, the happy jester, as soon as he comes down from the pulpit, so that the people get the idea that he didn't think it was as serious as it sounded a moment ago, and the thoughtless young people say: “Oh, he is fine, he makes you feel so good.” And in addition, the sermon itself is often constructed more to entertain, yes, what is worse, amuse and divert, rather than to awaken and convert the people. How are they not praised, those who can “interest” as it is called and “keep” the crowds even though they remain in their fleshly minds! Jesus preached so that it created distance between him and his hearers, they went away, those who were not with him in truth. The word offended them and they went away, and they were allowed to go, and only a little group was left. This principle also characterized the early period of our work.
Otto Högfeldt (1861-1948), “Our Original Principles”
From Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations, Glenn P. Anderson, ed. (1980), pp. 98,99.
Source of New Life
Our forebears were Bible searchers. They had a profound, emotionally-toned feeling about life--its sinfulness and mortality, its tragedy and unequal fortunes, its helplessness in the face of actualities and ideals. This was a matter of experience with them and not philosophical formulation. It was a matter of simple and felt human observation about life. As such, they came to the Bible and found the answers to the ancient and elemental questions that brood in the mind. In the biblical answers they found comfort and release and faith to believe over against unbelief. Their discussion and sermons give clear evidence of their faith in the Bible as the Word of God. The sermons and discussions sparkle with Bible quotations, not as arguments to prove a doctrinal point but as means to conversion, comfort, and guidance for the Christian life. One is fascinated by this mastery of the biblical message and its readiness for use by men who did not write their sermons or spend many hours in preparation.
Eric G. Hawkinson (1896-1984), Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), p. 131.
The Christian life was primary [in the early days of the Covenant], but life was presumed to rest upon an unshaken and unshakable belief in the truth of Scripture. You believed in the Bible. You believed in Christ. You believed in the life in Christ. This permitted you, with Waldenström, to raise questions about the authorship of Second Peter and the errors in the liturgical passages in Hebrews. It did not commit you to Ussher’s chronology, to a tortuous doctrine of inspiration, or to any single view on the atonement, the second coming, baptism, and the meaning of communion.
But you held an unshakable conviction that the Bible was the Word of God–all of it was the Word of God. You believed the Bible, you read it, you revered it; in it and through it God spoke his word of salvation to you. There were many dark things in the Bible and hard to understand. You did not always seek to parse, to collate, to reconcile everything. You did not grub. You studied and you listened. That is the way it was.
Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), By One Spirit (1962), p. 532.
The more I read the Bible and put faith and trust in it, the more it reveals itself to me to be true. Personally, I must say that as the Bible staked out the way for me to walk when I was young and was seeking a way in life, it now is the great comfort for my heart as it speaks to me in the terms of the great truths of the Christian faith.
I do not wave the Bible, I press it to my heart. It is my time table, my lamp shining in a dark room, my spiritual Duncan Hines (my Adventures in Good Living, if' you will), my travel guide. I trust it implicitly and I am never let down. I find that “all the sages said is in the book my mother read.” And I have no greater desire in all the world than that others shall find such treasures in the Bible as I find every day of my life.
Herbert E. Palmquist (1896-1981), Wait for Me! (1959) , p. 91.
If one goes to the Bible with an eye for errors, contradictions, grammatical anomalies, historical mistakes, or imprecise information and numbers, then the Bible is only great enough for scholarship about just these matters. But if one goes to the Bible with an eye for the life that surges like mighty waves rising from bursting streams here and there, then one will be rewarded infinitely more. The Bible occupies a world that should be studied with a telescope rather than a microscope. What a loss it would be to study the stars and the Northern Lights with a magnifying glass! But let us admit that it is also worthwhile to study the Bible with a microscope.... This is the right of the research process. . . . But according to Hebrews, faith looks through a telescope and notices that which is invisible under the research microscope, that is, the Bible that embraces the whole world of light and life, of comfort and guidance. And it is certainly true that no discovery of formal errors can take away anything of essential value from the Bible's contents, just as if during a morning walk one's admiration for the fresh, newly-born nature would be destroyed through the discovery of a leaf containing irregular, faulty edges or of stones which are not all cut into four square edges.
David Nyvall (1863-1946), Minnepolis Veckoblad, September 27, 1898, p. 3, quoted in Scott E. Erickson, David Nyvall and the Shape of an Immigrant Church (Acta Universitatis Upsallensis, Uppsala, 1996), p. 211.
The "Readers" did not come to the Bible because they had been convinced by theological and dogmatic discussions of its inerrancy or infallibility. They came, and continued to come, because they had found life and inspiration for themselves. They knew that speaking about food could not satisfy hunger and that speaking about thirst could not quench thirst. They trusted the Bible to be its own defense as well as their own, not by speaking about it, but by proclaiming its message in testimony and sermon, song and living.
In minutes of the Swede Bend Mission Society, dated April 18, 1870, we read: "There are around us so many views of the Word of God and so many different voices regarding the salvation of the soul. In spite of this, the way to life is but one. How then shall the people find assurance that they are on the right way and not lost on other ways? We find an answer in God's Word that he who believes in the Son of God has the testimony within himself." The Mission Friend came to the Bible with the confidence that God would speak to him personally. It became for him an answer to the ultimate and remaining questions of life, a means of devotion and inspiration in the context of the believing fellowship.
Eric G. Hawkinson (1896-1984), Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), p. 110.
There are cities and congregations which have faithful teachers who, with ceaseless preaching, plow and sow and with intercession and tears water the seed. And still there is a pitiable condition among the people. There is no report of any lasting power or evidence of Christian truth, no practice in faith and godliness. There is only a rather loose ostentation of concepts and feeling. What is the reason? Look into the situation and you will discover that the people themselves have not begun to use God's Word. So all these good things they hear from the pulpit escape them and bear no fruit. There are places and times in which powerful revivals come, people are active, life becomes verdant, and flowers appear everywhere. One begins to rejoice in the thoughts of rich fruits from this beautiful planting of the Lord. Then a few years pass, and when you visit this field, you no longer recognize it. You look with sorrow upon the plundered land. You see only thistles and thorns, increased insolence and ungodliness. What is the reason? A strong worker was taken away, there was no one to take care of the people, and they had not had time to live themselves into the Word and to use it rightly.
Contrary to this, you will find other areas where no outstanding personality was in leadership as the head of God's work but where the people had begun to edify themselves with God's Word. There you see God's work not only sustained but notably increased, expanded, and matured. How shall this be explained? Well, think of your own experience if you are a Christian who for some time has been attending the school of the Spirit. What do you have that praises yourself as the means for the sustenance and growth of your spiritual life ? Have you been so strong, so faithful, so watchful, so illumined that you have been able to stand in all lamentable plights? No, you would praise nothing but God's faithfulness.
But God is equally faithful to all. Where Christianity has died out, it is not to be seen as a lack of God’s faithfulness. No, the difference lies in this, that there the means of grace have been neglected....
C. O. Rosenius (1816-1868), “On the Purpose and Necessity of Using God’s Word”
From Eric G. Hawkinson, Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), pp. 112,113.
Whether from the lectionary or in a free selection of texts, one thing remains certain: Christ proclaimed in his fullness was the point of reference for interpreting the biblical text. The Bible was food and drink, the source of nourishment and identity; but even more, it was the voice of the Shepherd going ever before his own, calling them by name, leading them in and out to find pasture, ever seeking them when they strayed, restraining and disciplining them when needed. Whether in mission house, tabernacle, or church, preaching was not for the purpose of defending the Bible or setting forth opinions about it. Preaching was for a personal and communal meeting with Christ. “The Master is here and is calling for you.”
In the great tradition of preaching over the centuries, this mystical meeting occurs by finding oneself, coming to oneself. When you read of the sinful woman, there you were with Christ. When you heard of the Pharisee in the temple, you stood there as a poor creature depending on your own miserable works to merit the mercy of God. When you listened to the story of the disciples caught in the storm and Peter coming toward Jesus on the water, you were the one sinking in the waves as Christ reached out his hand to save you.
Glen V. Wiberg (1925- ), This Side of the River (Published by Salem Covenant Church, New Brighton, Minnesota, 1995), pp. 50,51.
It is beautiful–absolutely beautiful–the prominence the Bible gives to reconciliation and unity. I remember when I was just a child on the family farm in North Dakota. It was Sunday afternoon and I had been playing baseball with my brothers. When we had almost finished I stepped into the little farm house, our home, for a drink of water. As I entered I heard my father reading to my mother the story of Joseph from the Old Testament. He was at the place where Joseph, now the governor under Pharaoh, recognized that it was his brothers who had sold him who had now come out of the arid and non-producing land of Canaan into Egypt to purchase grain. I paused to listen for a moment, then turned around to leave, but I couldn't. The tone of my father's voice, so completely absorbed in relating the account, made me want to hear again the whole sequence: the struggle within Joseph, his disguise, the testings of his brothers, the return to Jacob and back to Egypt--this time bring Benjamin with them--and finally the revelation and reconciliation. It was all just too overpowering; I could do nothing but stand and listen. I can still hear my father reading, trying to conceal his emotions; but the tears and sobs could not be held back as he read, “I am Joseph; is my father still alive? ... and he kissed all his brothers and wept ... and after that his brothers talked with him” (Genesis 45). There is little that is more beautiful to a human being than reconciliation that breaks down the walls of separation and leads to communication, conversion, sharing, and belonging. God's Word sets before man example after example, and they are beautiful.
Milton B. Engebretson (1920-1996), “To Foster Unity,” from Bound to Be Free: essays on being a Christian and a Covenanter, James R. Hawkinson, ed. (1975), p. 90.
Have you not experienced after some longer period of being without the Word that you have become cold, disinclined in your inward life, weak for every temptation, worldly and carnal? Opposite to this there have been times when you have diligently sought the Word; have you not, then, felt better in your inward man? Again, were there not times when you were near to a fall into a sense of security and sin when a Bible verse or a sermon awakened you out of slumber and saved you? Were there not many times when you were cold and dead, the whole world seemed dark and dismal to you, and you remembered a verse from the Bible, something from a good book, or you met a friend who had God's Word in his mouth--then you received new life, new warmth, and the world was brightened again? Did you not then have David's experience: “Remember thy word to thy servant, in which thou hast made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction that thy promise gives me life.” Thus you see that the Word was the means through which God sustained your life in grace. It is the same way with the church and with all Christians. God's Word is not called a means of grace in vain. Without this word it is impossible to keep a life in grace.
C. O. Rosenius (1816-1868), “On the Purpose and Necessity of Using God’s Word”
From Eric G. Hawkinson, Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), p. 113.
Rain in abundance, O God, thou didst shed abroad; thou didst restore thy heritage as it languished; thy flock found a dwelling in it; in thy goodness, O God, thou didst provide for the needy (Psalm 68: 9,10).
How can deliverance come from such a fearful misery [as drought in the heritage of God]? Only through this, that God gives a merciful rain and lets grace overflow much more. Just as dew worms cannot be whipped up by sticks in the drought, so no soul can be driven to God through the remedy of the curse of the law. But when rain falls, then the dew worms come forth. Then, also, when God lets righteousness rain, this draws the sinner out of sin. Each word which Jesus speaks is a drop of this merciful rain that refreshes the soul; as we are told about him in the gospel: all bore witness and marveled at the words of grace that went forth from his mouth. His words are spirit and life; they bring and give life to lifeless and spiritless sinners.
If you are sitting there dead in sin and shame, dear one, sit then where it rains.... It is always raining in the Word. Sit there, and you will soon be drenched through and through.
August Pohl (1845-1913), Sermon in Missions-Vännen, September, 1878
From Eric G. Hawkinson, Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), pp. 65,66,67.
The highest joy that can be known by those who heav’nward wend–
it is the Word of life to own, and God to have as Friend....
The Word does give me wealth untold, all good it has in store;
my deepest sorrows lose their hold to joys forevermore....
How often when in deep despair my soul has been restored;
and when the tempter would ensnare ‘twould strength to stand afford....
It tells me of a love divine, how Jesus’ blood was shed;
each day this joyous song is mine as paths of grace I tread....
When stars above shall shine no more, God’s Word is still my light;
when pleasures of this world are o’er my joys will reach their height....
Nils Frykman (1842-1911), tr. Signe L. Bennett (1900-1996), Andrew T. Frykman (1875-1943)
The Covenant Hymnal: a Worshipbook (1996), No. 533.
