Review of He Shall Have Dominion

In reviewing this book one feels almost compelled to interact with Gray North's foreword, because he makes some rather extreme claims in it regarding the book itself, and the position it espouses. For this reason, many of my comments, while pertaining to the book, will be written with North's foreword in mind. Having recently read North's “Crossed Fingers,” I found the foreword to be incredibly weak, and I don't use that word lightly. In "Crossed Fingers," he speaks harshly against seminaries with accreditation, and mocks the PhD as an invention of liberal German education (He has one). Then, in this volume, after sweeping some Premillennialist opponent aside, he puts a snarky comment in the footnotes implying that the man is small potatoes and shouldn't be taken seriously because he teaches as some "obscure" seminary that isn't even accredited. He imputes beliefs to Premillennial and Amillennial folk that are simply not true. For a guy who talks about God's Law so much, he plays fast and loose with the 9th Commandment. He lets you know that Amillennialism has been the standard position of the Church for most of her existence. But he's fine with glibly kicking it to the curb because no one, in his estimation, has written a book on the scale of Gentry's. I fail to see how that is an argument at all. But the whole force of his argument seems to be that Gentry's book can make postmillennialism happen even if it isn't true because no one else could ever write a better eschatology book. I would have liked to see Gentry say something like "The views expressed in the foreword do not necessarily represent the views of the author."

If one were to believe Gary North's foreword, this should be the mother of all eschatology books. It isn't. And I hate to break it to Mr. North, but neither I nor anyone else is on the hook to write a point by point refutation of Mr. Gentry's book to make that assertion. There are good, standard works on Amillennialism, for instance (Hendrickson, Riddlebarger, Cox), which neither North nor Gentry has taken on point by point, which they nonetheless reject. That knife cuts both ways.

Moreover, it is hard to take North's high praise of the books references (and the sheer volume of them) as an indication of the greatness of the book, when many of the works referenced are his own. North claims that Gentry will drown his critics in footnotes. At least 80% of the boasted footnotes do not pertain directly to the defense of Postmillennialism. They are just references to various authors – not directly contributing to the building of Gentry's case. And several of the authors he does cite to bolster his position are authors of dubious quality. These are primarily his fellow theonomist Reconstructionists. If he wants to prove his point to those outside this small circle, he needs to demonstrate a consensus outside this circle. Hanko has rightly noted the vaunted support is illusory. Either the supposed references don’t really address the subject, or they are appealed to anachronistically, or they appeared to be pulled out of thin air. For example, in Postmillennialist literature, one will find several references to Charles Hodge. The fact is however that the one passage of Hodge that is marshalled in as proof, is the single line addressing the issue in his entire 3-volume Systematic Theology. Most of the citations provided in the book are not the earth-shattering proof North bragged about in his foreword. He hasn’t drown anyone in footnotes; he’s only cumbered up the ground.

Secondly, I find myself over 200 pages into the book (including the foreword and preface) still being told that there is an imminent powerhouse exegetical case for Postmillennialism just around the corner. And when the actual exegesis begins, much of it (most, in fact), falls squarely within the purview of Amillennialism, as well.

I hardly view myself as a cutting-edge thinker, so I can't imagine that my fundamental objections to are unique to me. So it is more than a little disappointing to not find them addressed in what is touted as the end-all text book on the subject. To demonstrate what I mean, I will list my objections, and briefly detail how (or if) they are dealt with in this book.

My fundamental objections to Postmillennialism:

1. Optimism vs. Pessimism argument. I fail to find this argument even remotely compelling. Gentry, like all modern Postmillennialists, promote their position by appealing to its optimistic view of the future – in opposition to the “negative” view held by Premillennialists and Amillennialists. My question (which I found completely absent) is this: Who says that one’s eschatology is to be assessed on the basis of pessimism or optimism? Is or is not the Second Advent of Christ the “blessed hope” of the Church? Is or is not the Second Advent of Christ therefore a most optimistic hope? So, how in the name of the 9^th Commandment, is it fair to accuse men who believe in the glorious Second Advent of being pessimists? And how does Postmillennialism not fall under the condemnation of the Second Helvetic Confession, which reads: “We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth”? This condemnation clearly applied to Postmillennialism, not Premillennialism, because the Jewish fable being rejected is a golden age before the Day of Judgment. So throwing out the opposing views merely on account of a supposed “pessimism” is no argument at all. It is logically fallacious. Every time Gentry interacts with Amillennialism, rather than seriously addressing the theological objections that are raised by acknowledging the effects of Original Sin, and the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, he glibly shoves them aside as “pessimistic.” There is a third word that is missing from his optimism/pessimism debate: realism. Who says that his opponents' views are pessimistic? This is begging the question. This arbitrary classification keeps his opponents' view held in a pejorative light, regardless of the validity of any of their objections.
2. Entangling of Church and State. Gentry repeatedly denies this connection, but every single book he cites in his favor advocates this very thing. And because his particular notion is built on Abraham Kuyper's notion of “common grace,” the way in which the Church is to influence society always terminates in compromise and worldliness. It denies, in action if not on paper, that God has placed enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. There is no conceivable way that the church can influence society along Postmillennialist terms without joint efforts between elect and reprobate. Any honest Christian will acknowledge that whenever compromise occurs between the Church and the world, it is always on the world's terms. It was the PCUSA's incipient Postmillennialism that facilitated her apostasy into Liberalism. Norh acknowledges as much in Crossed Fingers. Gentry, with absolutely no explanation or defense for the switch, starts using the word “culture” where he had once spoken of dominion. This is why the appeal to common grace bothers me so much. Whose culture is the Church called to promote? That is never defined. Presumably what is meant by the word is whatever is pleasing and aesthetic in any culture influenced by a Christian worldview. And it is precisely here that Gentry and company would fall afoul of their Postmillennialist predecessors. Part of the Postmillennialist “cultural mandate” always includes Christian involvement (and supposed superiority – leading to eventual control of) in whatever fields of interest society's “culture” develops – be it sports, the arts, and entertainment. Advocating Christian involvement in any of these fields prior to the early 20^th century would've gotten you excommunicated. It's not simply that this is compromise and worldliness, but it is a fascination with the things of this world that makes little sense. Am I to believe that in the eternal state, I have no better pastime to look forward to than the music of Beethoven or Mozart? This cheapens the glory of the eternal state. And it does so precisely by promoting secular society's culture. It acts as if, divorced from God, humans are capable, and in fact do, create a culture that deserves to be imported into the Eternal state. Gentry makes a brief reference to the “salt” principle, but it seems like quite an exegetical stretch to say that the Church acts like salt by preserving the world's culture. 17^th and 18^th century Postmillennialists might not have advocated such worldliness, but it lies at the base of the system because it ignores the reality of total depravity and the enmity God has placed between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. I’m not accusing Gentry of promoting this particular view of “culture,” but he has left the term entirely undefined – and this view of human culture is precisely what is held by most advocates of “common grace.”
3. Confusing the person and work of Christ with His mystical body. This seems to me to be the most obvious objection. I defy anyone to show me in Scripture one single benefit the Church enjoys that does not flow to her from Christ, her Federal Head. And yet, if the Postmillennial position be true, it looks suspiciously as if Christ receives victory over His enemies through the Church, rather than her enjoying said victory through His work. I see no way of escaping this dilemma. In His office as King, Christ rules over all creation and He subjects His enemies to Himself. If I were to claim that it is our responsibility as Christians to work out a perfect sanctification in this life and then present this to Christ as a ground for His claim of sanctifying His people through the work of the Holy Spirit, you'd say I was a Pelagian – and you'd be right. What am I to make of an eschatology that posits the same thing in reference to the cosmos? And this objection is not so much as even noticed in the book. The references to Psalm 8 substantiate my claim. Hebrews clearly teaches that Psalm 8 refers specifically to Christ. Christ is the “son of man” in Psalm 8 under whose feet all things will be subjected. Yet, even after noting the Hebrews citation of Psalm 8, Gentry continues on as if the “son of man” is the Church putting all things under it own feet.
4. The newness of the position. Novelty is never a good thing theologically. Gentry fails to convince me of the antiquity of his position. He make a few references to respected Patristic sources, but freely acknowledges that not one of these men would recognize, or accept, Postmillennialism as a system. Sorry, you can’t claim in your favor people who wouldn't even recognize the position. He marshals in Augustine, who every scholar I have ever read on the subject affirms is primarily responsible for the first clear and developed exposition of the Amillennial position. He notes that certain comments in Augustine’s writings are capable of even a Premillennial construction. If this is true, then let’s call it a draw and say that no one gets to claim Augustine for their eschatological system. He then leaps over a 1000 years (an actual millennium) to Daniel Whitby (1703). Mr. Gentry hastens to inform us that the Postmillennial system predates Whitby, and as evidence he submits the work A Revelation of the Revelation, by Thomas Brightman (1562- 1607). Even granting this to be the case, this is a virtual admission that Postmillennialism as a recognizable theological position did not exist prior to the 17^th century. Let’s assume for a moment that all Christians are myopic, viewing the struggle between the Church and the world through the lens of their own condition. If this be true, Christian for most of Church history would not be inclined to hold to the Postmillennial position. Amillennialism makes sense. Even Premillennialism makes sense, in this light, assuming it carries water. But there has only been one brief period in Church history where the societal milieu would lead anyone to view the struggle between the Church and the world in Postmillennial terms: the 17^th century – which is exactly when we first find the system developed and promoted. This may not be conclusive, but it certainly must count for something.
5. It only works if everyone believes it. This is more of an observation than an objection. But it surfaces everywhere. North's foreword leaves the impression that the book is so compelling that it will literally make Postmillennialism be true simply by sheer force of argumentation. One of the most common laments of the book, stated or implied, is that the Church has not achieved her destined Millennial kingdom because not everyone is on board. What does one make of such a feeling? It seems to fly right in the face of the ostensible Reformed commitment to Divine sovereignty. If God is sovereign, and He plans (wills) to convert the whole world to Christianity, why does the dissent in anyone's eschatology matter? What fulfillment of any Scripture prophecy ever hinged on the belief and/or acceptance of it by anyone – in or out of Israel? Scripture tells us that scoffers will say, “Where is the promise of his coming,” and yet this will not hinder Christ's return to judge the world in righteousness.
6. Scripture repeatedly speaks of the time prior to Christ's return as mirroring the days of Noah and Lot. These were hardly characterized by mass conversion to faith in the God of Israel. And, just as an aside, had there been more righteous men in Sodom besides Lot, would Lot's “saltiness” have been intended to save Sodom's culture? To ask the question is to answer it. This raises the whole question of history. This objection Gentry does take on, although he treats is as a practical objection, rather than a theological one – which is surely is. The objection he responds to take the form of questioning how one can hold such an ameliorating view of the future in the same century that witnessed World War I and II? His response is that, all things considered, this is a rather small sample, and that the world present an overall more positive picture if your sample is bigger than the 20^th century. Granted, there is something to be said for this reply, but the problem isn't stated accurately. It's not just that the 20^th century witnessed so much war and bloodshed. This is the legacy of mankind since Cain murdered Abel. That is not a small sample. Plus, does the history of Israel's apostasy, the apostasy of Papal Rome, and the apostasy of mainline Protestantism not count for anything? Does this not verify the fact that Christ's church is always a remnant, a “little flock,” who are among the few that find and walk the narrow path that leads to salvation?

I realize it sounds insane to say this of a book clocking in at over 600 pages, but it is strikingly superficial. I felt like I was reading clickbait: “You won't believe what happens next” - only to find the case presented skims along the surface of the doctrine being presented and the supposed Scriptural support for it. When it takes you 8 chapters, plus a foreword and preface to set up your exegesis, it's hard to expect anything compelling. And the 8 chapters don't really bear directly on the Postmillennial position, per se. So one feels cheated when Gentry marches into Chapter 9 triumphantly as if he's decimated every semblance of an objection. And the exegesis comes in rather sideways most of the time as well. Instead of going to the prophecies of Isaiah and arguing that the triumph of the Messiah's kingdom is most faithfully understood as a golden age on the earth prior to Christ's return, he argues from the “be fruitful and multiply” command in Genesis. As I stated already, this completely overlooks the Fall. And it doesn't do anything for his case (he thinks it does) to show how man, after the Fall, immediately took to dominating nature. The command was given to man prior to the Fall, and ignoring the Fall to assert that the command is still equally binding is poor exegesis. It neglects to explain why such dominion-behavior was good when fallen sinners did it, yet it is actually only the domain of the Church. That is no small oversight. Prior to the mission of the Twelve Spies, Israel was commanded to enter the Promised Land and conquer it. The morning after God sentenced Israel to wander 40 years in the wilderness, some of the men of war arose to enter Canaan to, as they put it, to “go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned.” Yet, this apparent act of obedience to the dominion mandate, was now sinful. In fact, the men who did attempt this conquering of Canaan were defeated in battle precisely for trying to do now what God had commanded them to do before their sin had entered the picture. Gentry doesn't come within a country mile of this objection. And based on the Scripture precedent of Numbers 14, one would be inclined to think that defeat is exactly what Postmillennialism should expect.

Starting at Chapter 10, Gentry launches into the exegesis proper, but by this point he has worn the reader’s patience with 200+ pages of “any moment now, I’m gonna blow everyone out of the water.” And even granting that his exegesis is fair, it suffers from two defects that weaken his use for his case. A). Much of what he says doesn't represent Postmillennialism as a whole, and some of it could be agreed upon by both Premillennialists and Amillennialists. That hardly can be counted in his favor. B). All of his exegetical work is based on the Dominion Mandate which he inexplicably bait-and-switched into a “cultural mandate” within minutes of introducing the subject. It doesn't matter how formidable his edifice appears when it is built on the rotten foundation of cultural compromise as a way of Christianizing the world.

There is an unbalanced, I almost said inconsistent, presentation of the opposing views’ hermeneutical principles. In the foreword, North castigates Amillennialists for a “spiritualizing” hermeneutic – the same slander hurled by Dispensationalists at both Amillennialists and Postmillennialists. Then, in the body of the work, Gentry rides herd on the Dispensationalists for their “literal” method of interpretation. Let’s be honest, Dispensationalists treat Scripture in many ways, but most of them are not literal. I have never understood people who can affirm that the chariots in Nahum 2:4 were modern-day automobiles, and the locusts of Revelation were Bell-Huey helicopters, have any room to boast of a literal hermeneutic. What surprises me, is that after criticizing Dispensationalists for their silly literalism with regard to prophecy, the Postmillennial position advocated by Gentry (and North) understands the same prophecies in a literal sense as well – the only difference being whether the “golden age” takes place before or after the Second Advent of Christ. It hardly seems consistent to squawk about one opponent advocating a “literal” hermeneutic when you’re going to use it yourself. Or to squawk about another opponent’s advocating a “spiritualizing” hermeneutic, when you periodically have recourse to the same approach. In fact, Chapter 15 ends with what is essentially a concession of this point. Mr. Gentry spends several pages treating the New Heavens and the New Earth in quite a literal fashion, and ends the segment by saying Premillennialists and Postmillennialists have no problem interpreting the New Heaven and Earth because both interpret it as a literal golden age upon the earth. Only Amillennialists, he says, have exegetical problems, because the relevant passages lend themselves more easily to a literal interpretation.

Chapter 16 is where I take the biggest issue. He spends a full twenty-eight pages on the “characters” of eschatology (the Beast, the Antichrist, etc). Never once does he even so much as mention the Papacy. I know that it is controversial today to say that. But controversy aside, there is no other doctrine about which ALL the Reformers were monolithically agreed than that the Papacy is the Antichrist! Zwingli, Luther, Bucer, Calvin, Martyr, Beza, Musculus, Cranmer, Melanchthon, (I could do this all day) to a man held that the Antichrist is the Papacy and that the Beast is his Romish church. And this includes both the 17^th and 18^th century predecessors of his theonomic version of Postmillennialism: the Pilgrim Fathers! Until the early 20^th century, nothing would get you suspected more quickly of apostasy than expressing doubts regarding the identity of the Antichrist and the Papacy. The various streams of Reformation thought may have differed on their understanding of the Sacraments, on the nature of the Church, on the relation of the Church to the State, but there was zero difference on their view that the Papacy was the Antichrist! The Reformers, to a man, provided long, detailed exegetical explanations to prove the identity. They weren't simply engaging in rhetorical retaliation against their persecutors, and it is libel to suggest it. Anyone is free to deny the identity if they please, but you cannot offer your position as authoritative without explaining point by point why the Reformers were wrong. After all, this is what North says you must do if you disagree with this book (hence the inordinate length of this review!)

This is actually a monumental error in his hermeneutic. By making the Beast and Antichrist stand for Nero and Pagan Rome, he ignores a central motif of Scripture: covenant – which is ironic because he talks about it so much. All the judgment language in Revelation is lifted from the Old Testament – and every bit of it comes from the warnings of the prophets against apostate Israel. The Great Whore of Revelation is set in terms that mirror the description of the Bride (which is clearly the Church). This means that the Whore should be understood as an unfaithful whore of a church. This is precise verbiage of the Lord against Israel: “playing the whore.” So it’s not that Gentry is wrong to notice the covenant language, it’s that he’s wrong regarding the referent. God is in covenant with His Church, not with mankind in general. You can talk Reformed theology till you’re blue in the face, but if you miss this, you've missed the essence of Reformed theology. The view that makes the Beast and the Antichrist identical to pagan Rome (as opposed to Papal Rome and the Pope), was invented by Counter-Reformation Jesuit theologians precisely to create an alternative interpretation to the Reformers. It is one thing to disagree with a position, but it is quite another thing to skirt a reasonable opposing view by completely ignoring its existence. And the view that identifies the Antichrist with the Papacy is not one of several views held by the Reformers: It is the distinctive view!

After this, Gentry turns his attention to his interpretation of the book of Revelation. This is where his work will be hardest to swallow. In his attempt to prove that everything in the book is past and has already taken place, one is left wondering why we aren't in the Millennium already. He literally (pun intended) has the entirety of the prophecy of Revelation accomplished by 70 AD.  He argues this based on the preterit tense of many of the verbs in Revelation – and that phrases such as “must soon come to pass” in Chapter 1 don’t allow for a long delay in the fulfillment of any of the contents of the book. There are a couple of reasonable objections to this. First, many Scripture prophecies are in tenses that sound past even when the event is far off into the future. If anything, this emphasizes God’s power by showing that He speak with certainty about future events because He has ordained them. Secondly, think of the promise in Isaiah 7: “The Lord Himself will give a sign – a virgin will conceive.” Am I to reject an interpretation that refers this to Jesus because it would be unreasonable to tell Ahaz that God was giving a sign that was still hundreds of years in the future? Of course not! Further, his interpretation method is not consistent. When dealing with Daniel’s 70 Weeks, he follows the standard 1 day = 1 year method to arrive at 490 years. But when he comes to the 1280 days of Revelation, he suddenly takes a 1 day = 1 day approach and has the whole 1280 days prophecy fulfilled in 3 ½ years. Perhaps this is correct, but he gives no clue as to why he has switched hermeneutics all of a sudden. He can’t see how it would be honest or fair to tell people of things that would soon coming to pass, when the fulfillment might be far in the future. My question is: How was it fair and honest to offer Ahaz a sign which neither he nor his great-great-great-great grandchildren would live to see? That knife cuts both ways. Plus, he is averse to injecting a long time into the fulfillments of the prophesies of Revelation, but he doesn't mind injecting indeterminate centuries into the space between the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the Second Coming. And if we follow the 1 day=1 year formula, why shouldn't the Millennium be 365,000 years instead of 1,000?

His argument that Nero is the Beast relies on a speculative guess at the reason behind a variant reading of the number of the beast verse, which says “616” instead of “666.” He suspects that a copyist unaware of the numerical value of “Nero” in Hebrew altered 666 into 616. Now, granting that this took place, why are we to place any interpretive value on a purposeful alteration of God’s inspired word? I don’t how I’m supposed to take this argument seriously. He asserts that “Nero” in Hebrew letters (which all have numerical values), equals 666. But Revelation was written in Greek, so why are we to think that the Hebrew numbering system is what we are to use? Besides, nearly every author who has written on eschatology has his own explanation of the infamous 666. Gentry neglects to take this into account and explain why his peculiar way of deciphering it is superior to anyone else’s.

In concluding the book Gentry has three chapters devoted to fielding the objections, which he categorizes as “Pragmatic,” “Theological,” and “Biblical.” The answers to the pragmatic objections are fairly good, but this is because the objections he tackles are Dispensationalist objections. But not every Premillennialist is a Dispensationalist, so tearing Dispensationalist objections to ribbons doesn't necessarily deal with the objections that a classic Premillennialist might offer. Little is said of pragmatic objections by Amillennialists, and this is because their objections are largely related to exegesis of Scripture, not the daily newspaper.

The answers to the Theological and Biblical objections follow the same pattern: tear the Dispensationalists to ribbons, and call it a day. When handling the Amillennialists’ objections, he generally does little more than state the objection and move on. His most formidable Amillennialist opponent is Professor Herman Hanko, and it is clear that Gentry knows this. When presenting an Amillennialist objection or interpretation that is easy to refute, he goes to Hoekema, but when he wants to present the strongest Amillennial arguments, he cites Hanko. The work by Hanko that he most commonly cites is an unpublished lecture found in the PRC’s magazine The Standard Bearer, from the April, 1978 issue. I read that article (An Exegetical Refutation of Postmillennialism), and I must say, Gentry’s handling of Hanko’s paper leaves a lot to be desired. Essentially, it boils down to labeling it “pessimistic.” Again, I fail to see this to be a category derived from Scripture. Theological debate should focus on true versus false, correct versus incorrect, exegetical versus eisegetical, not optimistic versus pessimistic. And Hanko has an additional card up his sleeve that never gets addressed: The appeal to the Church Fathers and Calvin is pure anachronism. No one had ever heard of Gentry’s  theonomic Reconstructionist form of Postmillennialism in either the Patristic or Reformation era, so they cannot be cited as authorities or backers of the position. It’s like citing Euclid to support Newton or Einstein. Moreover, the optimism versus pessimism gambit is misleading anyway. Both Premillennialists and Amillennialists believe the Christ rules and reigns and that the Eternal State will be an everlasting display of Christ’s triumph. That is optimism, is it not? Plus, this sees the enjoyment of the triumph as the culmination of all things. In the Postmillennialist view the Millennium isn't a full display of Christ’s triumph. That still has to wait for 1000 years. Even if Christians outnumber unbelievers by 5:1, as Gentry suggests, Christ’s triumph is still not displayed as complete. For that to happen, all His foes must be forever vanquished.

Apart from these issues, the book is horribly formatted. Typos abound. Nearly every page has very noticeable typos. The whole section of Dispensationalism's pretended appeal to a literal reading of prophecy is so fraught with typos, it makes is nearly impossible to read. The word intended is obviously “literal.” But in nearly half of the instances of the word, the text reads “liberalism.” This is clearly a formatting problem occasioned by the OCR conversion to pdf, but it is very poor on the part of North’s and Gentry's organization to distribute a book they are undoubtedly aware has so many typographical errors. Plus there are countless instances of words and phrases in bold face font – as if they are being emphasized. But the context will reveal that there could be no possible reason to emphasize these words and/or phrases. Now, it may be nitpicky to bring this poor formatting up, but for a book that claims to be scholarly, and claims to trounce the scholarship of its opponents, lousy formatting is unacceptable. The book was written in 1992. Presumably someone could have edited it for typos since then, or at least since the conversion to pdf. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Inspiration Includes the Words, Not Simply the Thoughs

“The prophets and the apostles,” some say, “were, no doubt, inspired when they wrote their sacred books, in so far as respected their thoughts; but we must believe, that, beyond this, they were left to themselves as respects their language; so that in this written revelation the ideas are God's, and the expressions those of a man...the Divine Spirit is considered to have presented the holy truths they announce to the view of the evangelists and the prophets, leaving them no more to do than simply to express them; and this mode of conceiving of what they did,” it is added, “at once accounts for the striking differences of style which their writings exhibit.”

We reply:—

1. That this system is directly contrary to Scripture testimony. The Bible declares itself to be written, “not with the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." It calls itself 'the word of God," "the words of God,' 'the voice of God,' 'the oracles of God,' 'the lively oracles of God," "the holy letters of God," "the scripture of God." A scripture, or writing, is made up of letters and words, and not of invisible thoughts only: but, we are told, "all SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God." What is WRITTEN, therefore, is inspired of God (θεόπνευστος); and that which is inspired of God is ALL SCRIPTURE - it is all that is written (πᾶσα γραφὴ ).
2. While this system is contradictory to the Bible, it is also most irrational. The ideas of our fellow-men embody themselves in words; and it is there only that you can seize them. Souls are revealed to us only in the flesh. You do not learn their character; you know nothing of their desires or their experiences; you do not even suspect their existence; and betwixt you and them there are no ties, until they have become clothed with bodies, and have received organs, so that they can manifest themselves to you. My most intimate friend is known to me only by the language of his voice and his gestures. If he had no power of employing these, in vain might he remain for twenty years at my side: he would be to me as if he were not.
3. This theory of a divine revelation, in which you would have the inspiration of the thoughts without the inspiration of the language, is so inevitably irrational that it cannot be sincere, and proves false even to those who propose it; for, without their suspecting it, it makes them come much further down in their arguments than their first position seems at a first glance to indicate. Listen to them. Though the words are those of man, say they, the thoughts are those of God. And how will they prove this to you? Alas! once more, by attributing to this Scripture from God, contradictions, mistakes, proofs of ignorance! Is it then the words alone that they attack? and are not these alleged errors much more in the ideas than in the words? So true it is that we cannot separate the one from the other, and that a revelation of God's thoughts ever demands a revelation of God's words also.
4. This theory is not only anti-biblical, irrational, and mischievous; further, it is taken up arbitrarily, and amounts at best to a gratuitous hypothesis.
5. Besides, it is very useless; for it resolves no difficulty. You find it difficult, say you, to conceive how the Holy Ghost could have given the words in Holy Scripture; but can you tell us any better how he gave the thoughts? Will it be more easy for you, for example, to explain how God suggested to Moses the knowledge of the different acts of the creation, or to St. John that of all the scenes of the last day, than to conceive how he made them write the narrative of these things in the language of the Hebrews, or in that of the Greeks?
6. But we have much more to say than this. That which in this theory ought above all to strike every attentive mind, is its extreme inconsistency, seeing that those even who hold it most strenuously, are forced withal to admit that, in its greatest part, the Scripture behooved to be inspired to the men of God EVEN IN ITS WORDS.
7. We have said, that the question relates to the BOOK, and not to the WRITERS. You believe that God gave them the thoughts always, and not always the words; but the Scripture tells us, on the contrary, that God has given them always the words, and not always the thoughts. As for their thoughts, while they were in the act of writing, God might inspire them with ideas more or less lively, more or less pure, more or less elevated: that interests my charity alone, but has no bearing on my faith. The SCRIPTURE—the Scripture which they have transmitted to me, perhaps without themselves seizing its meaning, at least without ever entirely comprehending it, this is what concerns me. Paul might have been mistaken in his thoughts, when, on appearing before the council of the priests, and not recognizing God's high-priest, he ventured to say to him, “God shall strike thee, thou whited wall!" This is of little consequence, however, provided I know that Peter might have been mistaken in his thoughts when, refusing to believe that God could send him among the heathen, he did not perceive and acknowledge that “in every nation, they who turn to God are accepted of him." He might have been still more grievously mistaken when, at Antioch, he compelled Paul to withstand him to the face, because he was to be blamed, and because he walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel. But how does this concern me, after all, I repeat, at least as respects my faith? For the question is, not how I can know at what moments, or in what measure, Paul, John, Mark, James, or Peter, were inspired in their thoughts, or sanctified in their conduct: what, above all, interests me, is to know that all the sacred pages were divinely inspired; that their written words were the words of God; and that, in giving these to us, they spoke, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, (οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις); that then it is NOT THEY that speak, but the Holy Ghost;" in a word, that “God hath spoken BY THE mouth of his prophets since the world began.“ The sacred writers were sometimes inspired; but the Holy Scriptures were so ALWAYS. Accordingly, the times, the measures, the degrees, the alternations of the inspiration of the men of God, are not for us an object of faith; but that which is an object of faith, is that the Scripture is divinely inspired, and that that which is divinely inspired is the whole Scripture. “Not one jot or tittle of it shall pass away.” There is doubtless an inspiration of thoughts, as there is an inspiration of words; but the first makes the CHRISTIAN, while it is the second that makes the PROPHET.
   
   From Theopneustia, by Louis Gaussen

Evolutionism is not Operational Science

It never ceases to amaze me when evolutionists (whether atheists or the so-called “theistic” variety) accuse creationists of being unscientific by ignoring evidence. The following paragraphs will point out a number of instances where evolutionism ignores greater demonstrable evidence than what they accuse creationists of ignoring.

First of all, let us assert plainly and forcefully: Evolutionism is not operational science! The scientific method, the true basis for any and all scientific knowledge, requires observation. Hypotheses are developed based on the observations. These are in turn tested by various experiments. The hypotheses are tweaked to conform to the outcome of the various experiments, resulting in a “theory.” Evolutionism begins with a theory, then it subjects data to experiments born from the very presuppositions this theory already believes. It then creates hypotheses to explain the results of his experiments, and then brushes aside as irrelevant the obvious fact that no one has lived long enough to witness the touted evolutionary changes. What exactly about this backward procedure is scientific?

It is worth repeating that science is not objective. Indeed, objectivity is impossible in any scientific field. This means we have good reason to doubt the outcome of all experiments that are relied upon to “demonstrate” evolution. It's not that we assert that the results of the experiments are fudged, but that the very experiments to which the data are subjected are, by nature, skewed in favor of the result the scientist hopes to achieve. They are a form of question-begging, and therefore, logical fallacies. The very experiments chosen are chosen precisely because they suit the experimenters presuppositions. No one who believes that apples are red would ever subject apples to experiments designed to prove that they are gray. The very experiments conceived of by the scientist will be conditioned by his presuppositions. It's just that simple. How exactly is begging the question scientific?

But let's cut a little closer to the bone. Evolutionism stakes everything on what is calls the “law of natural selection.” To any impartial observer, this is another crass case of begging the question. The very term “selection” is pure sophism – utterly inconsistent logically with the underlying philosophy of evolutionism. Selection is an act of an intelligent free-agent – the very thing evolutionism denies exists as a cause of the universe. As if this weren't stupid enough, the term gets partnered with the word “natural.” The 'Nature”' of the evolutionist is unintelligent. She acts by haphazard. The most common “explanation” offered by evolutionists is “chance.” There is no torture to which the word “chance” can be subjected in order to make it mean “intelligent free-agency.” Furthermore, there is no such thing as chance! There is no such entity. It is a piece of meaningless drivel, and an affront to rational beings to ask them to grant full personhood to a nonentity that can then be substituted for God as the creator of the universe.

Darwin was aware of the problem with the term “natural selection,” so he opted for Spenser's term, “survival of the fittest.” This nothing but the same absurdity wearing the disguise of a metaphor. The very notion “fitness” implies design! Fitness is an adjustment. It is crazy enough to say that the physical interaction between an organism and its environment should regularly result in this adjustment, but the simple fact is, there are countless cases where the notion is impossible. There are multitudes of know examples of fitness existing between organisms and conditions and/or environments it almost never encounters.

The fossil “record” is perhaps the greatest example of the unscientific nature of evolutionism. One of the most notable features of all discovered fossils is that they all represent established genera. Missing links are still missing 15 decades after Darwin hatched his theory. But their nonexistence is a much bigger problem for evolutionists than most people realize. Let me illustrate. On evolutionary theory, organisms adapt to their environment over the course of millions of years. If this were indeed true, nearly every fossil discovered would be a missing link, because the transition phases would outnumber established genera by far. At the very least, we should expect to see both sides of the blind process of evoltion played out in the fossil record. Along with developed species, there should also be fossils of the maladapted forms. Where are the million of years worth of fossil birds with useless stubs instead of developed wings? Where are the myriad fossils that would undoubtedly be the result of millions of years of failure? How is it that evolutionists only seem to be aware of the successful mutations? The downside of evolutionary change should be thousands of times more plenteous.

A more devastating critique is this: In what conceivable way can the fact that nature more regularly fails be called an “evolution?” Nature's failures outnumber her successes a billion to one. How on earth is that an evolution? How exactly is that scientific? On evolutionary theory, one should be able to make the same arguments without appeal to the fossil record at all. If nature is indeed evolving, where are all the living transitions? Why is every single plant and animal part of a clearly defined, established genera?

Never mind dinosaurs and apes for the moment. Let's just consider humans as they live today. Humans as supposedly the high point of evolution – the most complicated result of this supposed process. Is it natural to assert that man has adapted over million of years to his environment when men live comfortably and naturally in every climate on earth? Based on the central tenets of evolutionism, this is diametrically opposite to the result touted with regard to every other species.

Evolutionists typically respond to the above criticism that blind chance, given enough time, amid the multitude of its experiments may sometimes happen upon results that bear the appearance of an orderly plan or design. The problem with this response is that it lies about the nature of the case. Nature does not get it right “sometimes” on the evolutionary scheme; it get is right every time. Always! What evolutionists have failed to account for is the observable fact that nature's results always have an orderly adaptation. How exactly is it that every single organ of every single life form living today or represented in the fossil record shows us orderly adaptation? Where, pray tell, are nature's failures? Where are the vast remains of nature's random, non-intelligent, haphazard failed efforts?

Robert Dabney mentions the famous illustration of the someone throwing a basket of printer's type letters, until, after an infinite number of throws, he happened to get precisely the arrangement of letters that composed the poems of Ennius. In response to the question: Why couldn't this happen, Dabney replies, “Suppose, I reply, that the condition of his experiments were this: that he should throw a different basket in each trial, and that a considerable part of all the types thrown in vain should remain heaped around him; then, he and his experiments would have been buried a thousand times over beneath the rubbish of his failures long before the lucky throw were reached. But this is the correct statement of the illustration. The simple making of this statement explodes the whole plausibility, leaving nothing but a bald absurdity. For, as has been already stated, Evolution must admit the teachings of Paleontology. But the later asserts that the organized beings of vast ages still exist, in the form of fossils. Now, will the Evolutionist pretend that the durable remains of the hurtful variations were less likely to continue in the strata than those of the naturally selected? Not one whit. Then, there should be, on his supposition, as large a portion of the printer's types from every unsuccessful 'throw' left for our inspection as from the sole successful one. Where are they?”

Let that sink in: If Nature has thrown out billions of baskets-full of letters hundreds of millions of times, we would never see the one good throw because we'd be buried in the leftover letters from all the unsuccessful throws! Planet earth should be a gigantic bone pile the size of the solar system.

But there is an even bigger problem: Evolutionism asserts that given enough time (which is the only reason their theory requires billions of years), the chance reshuffling of matter could produce the universe as we know it. But this is a grossly deceptive presentation of their case. It's not that after 100 billion attempts, Nature (whatever that means) could get it right. Before responding to this, let us note the personification of Nature (indicated by the capital N), which implies intelligence and design, the very things evolutionism is supposed to reject! Back to the subject: On the evolutionist's scheme, it's not that Nature might get it right after 10^1,000,000 times. Evolutionism actually proceeds as if Nature gets it right every time! It's not just that a zillion random reshufflings of quarks luckily turned into Oxygen; the same would be required for all 118 known elements. Then a zillion reshufflings (each!) of these elements are required to get all the various molecules that make up water, countless types of rock, breathable atmospheres, life forms that breathe said atmospheres, on and on the list goes. The number of lucky breaks required numbers more that the sum total of particles in the universe.

Science is established by experimentation, which means that predictable, repeatable results. No chemist would be confident in recommending his latest concoction as a cure for anything, without years' worth of predictable and repeatable lab results. Evolution, as far as it pretends to be science, affirms this too. But its entire superstructure is built on an actual denial of this scientific foundation. No repeatable proof, not predictable results, no “this is what happens every time.” Evolutionism actually requires accepting as legitimate exactly what every scientist in every discipline would reject!

One cannot escape the impression that evolutionists have built their empire of illusion by accounting for the movement of the train by explaining that that there are billions more railroad cars than previously believed. This logical fallacy neglects the basic fact that multiplying the train cars infinitely still doesn't account for the movement of the train. For that, you need an engine.

Inspiration of Scripture and its Relation to Translations

It is some times said to us, You assert that the inspiration of the Scriptures extended to the very words of the original text; but wherefore all this verbal exactness of the Holy Word, seeing that, after all, the greater number of Christians can make use of such versions only as are more or less inexact? Thus, then, the privilege of such an inspiration is lost to the Church of modern times; for you will not venture to say that any translation is inspired. This is a difficulty which, on account of its insignificance, we felt at first averse to noticing; but we cannot avoid doing so, being assured that it has obtained some currency among us, and some credit also. Our first remark on this objection must be, that it is not one at all. It does not bear against the fact of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures; it only contests the advantages of that inspiration…

We proceed, then, to show how even this assertion, when reduced to these last terms, rests on no good foundation. The divine word which the Bible reveals to us, passes through four successive forms before reaching us in a translation. First, it was from all eternity in the mind of God. Next, it was passed by Him into the mind of man. In the third place, under the operation of the Holy Ghost, and by a mysterious process, it passed from the prophets' thoughts, into the types and symbols of an articulate language; it took shape in words. Finally, after having undergone this first translation, alike important and inexplicable, men have reproduced and counter-chalked it, by a new translation, in passing it from one human language into another human language. Of these four operations, the three first are divine; the fourth alone is human and fallible. Shall it be said, that because the last is human, the divinity of the three former should be a matter of indifference to us? Mark, however, that between the third and the fourth— I mean to say, between the first translation of the thought by the sensible signs of a human language, and the second translation of the words by other words—the difference is enormous. Between the doubts that may cleave to us respecting the exactness of the versions, and those with which we should be racked with respect to the correctness of the original text (if not inspired even in its language) the distance is infinite. It is said; of what consequence is it to me that the third operation is effected by the Spirit of God, if the last be accomplished only by the spirit of man? In other words, what avails it to me that the primitive language be inspired, if the translated version be not so? But people forget, in speaking thus, that we are infinitely more assured of the exactness of the translators, than we could be of that of the original text, in the case of all the expressions not being given by God.

Of this, however, we may become perfectly convinced, by attending to the five following considerations: 

1. The operation by which the sacred writers express with words the mind of the Holy Ghost, is, we have said, itself a rendering not of words by other words, but of divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now this first translation is an infinitely nicer matter, more mysterious and more liable to error (if God puts not his hand to it) than the operation can be afterwards by which we should render a Greek word of that primitive text, by its equivalent in another tongue. In order to a man's expressing exactly the thought of God, it is necessary, if he be not guided in his language from above, that he have thoroughly comprehended it in its just measure, and in the whole extent and depth of its meaning. But this is by no means necessary in the case of a mere translation. The divine thought being already incarnated, as it were, in the language of the sacred text, what remains to be done in translation is no longer the giving of it a body, but only the changing of its dress, making it say in French what it had already said in Greek, and modestly substituting for each of its words an equivalent word. Such an operation is comparatively very inferior, very immaterial, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to error than the preceding. It even requires so little spirituality, that it may be performed to perfection by a trustworthy pagan who should possess in perfection a knowledge of both languages. The version of an accomplished rationalist; who desires to be no more than a translator, I could better trust than that of an orthodox person and a saint, who should paraphrase the text, and undertake to present it to me more complete or more clear in his French than he found it in the Greek or in the Hebrew of the original…

2. A second character by which we perceive how different these two operations must be, and by which the making of our versions will be seen to be infinitely less subject to the chances of error than the original text (assuming that to be uninspired), is, that while the work required by our translations is done by a great many men of every tongue and country, capable of devoting their whole time and care to it -- by men who have from age to age controlled and checked each other, and who have mutually instructed and perfected each other—the original text, on the contrary, behooved to be written at a given moment, and by a single man with that man there was none but his God to put him right if he made a mistake, and to supply him with better expressions if he had chosen imperfect ones. If God, therefore, did not do this, no one could have done it. And if that man gave a bad rendering of the mind of the Holy Ghost, he had not, like our translators, friends to warn, predecessors to guide, successors to correct, nor months, years, and ages in which to review and consummate his work. It was done by one man, and done once for all. This consideration, then, further shows how much more necessary the intervention of the Holy Ghost was to the sacred authors than to their translators.

3. A third consideration, which ought also to lead us to the same conclusion, is, that while all the translators of the Scriptures were literate and laborious persons, and versed in the study of language, the sacred authors, on the contrary, were, for the most part, ignorant men, without literary cultivation, without the habit of writing their own tongue, and liable, from that very circumstance, if they expressed fallibly the divine revelation, to give us an infallible thought in a faulty way.

4. A fourth very powerful consideration, which will make one feel still more sensibly the immense difference existing between the sacred writers and their translators, is, that whereas the thought from God passed like a flash of lightning before the soul of the prophet; whereas this thought could nowhere be found again upon earth, except in the rapid expression which was then given to it by the sacred writer; whereas, if he have expressed it ill, you know not where to go in search of its prototype in order to recover the thought meant to be conveyed by God in its purity; whereas, if he have made a mistake, his blunder is forever irreparable; it must last longer than heaven and earth, it has blemished the eternal book remedilessly, and nobody on earth can correct it;—it is quite otherwise with translators. These, on the contrary, have always the divine text at hand, so as to be corrected and re-corrected, according to the eternal type, until they have become an exact counter-part of it. The inspired word leaves us not; we need not to go in search of it to the third heaven; it is still upon the earth, just as God himself first dictated it to us. You may thus devote ages to its study, in order that the human process of our translation may be subjected to its immutable truth. You can now, after the lapse of a hundred and thirty years, correct Osterwald and Martin, by means of a closer comparison of them with their infallible standard; after the lapse of three hundred and seventeen years, you can correct the work of Luther; after that, of fourteen hundred and forty years, that of St Jerome. God's phraseology is still before us, with which to confront our modern versions, as dictated by God himself, in Hebrew or in Greek, on the day of its being revealed; and, with our dictionaries in your hand, you may, age after age, return to the examination of the infallible expression which it has been his good pleasure to give to the divine thought, until you become assured that the language of the modern ones has truly received the counter impression, and given you the most faithful facsimile of it for your own use. Say no more then, What avails it to me, that the one is divine since the other is human? If you would have a bust of Napoleon, would you say to the sculptor, What avails it to me that your model has been moulded at St Helena on the very face of Bonaparte, seeing that, after all, your copy cannot have been so?

5. In fine, what further distinguishes the first expression which the mind of God has received in the individual words of the sacred book, from its new expression in one of our translations, is that, if you assume the words of the one to be as little inspired as those of the other, nevertheless, the range of conjectures which you might make on their possible faults would be, as respects the original text, a space without bounds and ever enlarging itself; while that same range, as respects the translations, is a very limited space, which is constantly diminishing the longer you remain in it.

If some friend, returning from the East Indies, where your father has, at a great distance from you, breathed his last, were to bring you from him a last letter, written with his own hand, or dictated by him, word for word, in Bengalee, would that letter’s being entirely from him be a matter of indifference to you, because you are not acquainted with the Bengalee language, and can read it only in a translation? Don't you know that you can cause translations of it to be multiplied, until they leave you no more doubt of the original meaning than if you had been a Hindoo? Will you not allow, that after each of these new translations your uncertainties will be always growing less and less, until they cease to be appreciable, as is the case in arithmetic with those fractionary and convergent progressions, the last terms of which are equivalent to zero; while, on the contrary, if the letter were not from your father himself, but from some stranger, who says he has only reproduced his thoughts, then you would find no limits to possible suppositions; and your uncertainties, transported into spheres new and boundless, would go on increasing the more you allowed your mind to dwell upon them; as is the case in arithmetic with those ascending progressions, the last terms of which represent infinitude. It is the same with the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated the whole of it, my uncertainties with respect to its translations are confined within a very narrow range; and even in this range, in proportion as it is re-translated, the limits of doubt are constantly drawn in more closely. But if left to think, on the contrary, that God has not entirely dictated it, and that human infirmity may have had its share in it, where shall I stop in assuming that there may be errors? I know not. The apostles were ignorant—shall I say, they were illiterate—they were Jews; they had popular prejudices; they judaized; they platonized; etc., I know not where to stop. I will begin like Locke, and end like Strauss. I will first deny the personality of Satan, as a rabbinical prejudice; I will end with denying that of Jesus Christ, as another prejudice. Between these two terms, in consequence, moreover, of the ignorance, on many points, to which the apostles were subject, I will proceed, as so many others have done, to admit, in spite of the letter of the Bible, and with the Bible in my hand, that there is no corruption in men, no personality in the Holy Ghost, no divinity in Jesus Christ, no expiation in his blood, no resurrection of the body in the grave, no eternity in future punishments, no anger in God, no devil, no miracle, no damned souls, no hell. St Paul was orthodox, shall I say? as others have done; but be misunderstood his Master. Whereas, on the contrary, if all have been dictated by God in the original, and even to the smallest expression, ‘to the least iota and tittle,’ who is the translator that could seduce me, by his labours, into any one of these negations, and make even the least of these truths disappear from my Bible?

Accordingly, who now can fail to perceive the enormous distance interposed by all these considerations between those two texts (that of the Bible and that of the translations), as respects the importance of verbal inspiration? Between the passing of the thoughts of God into human words, and the simple turning of these words into other words, the distance is as wide as from heaven to earth. God was required for the one; man sufficed for the other. Let it no longer be said, then, What would it avail to us that we have verbal inspiration in the one case, if we have not that inspiration in the other case? For between these two terms, which some would put on an equality, the difference is almost infinite.

Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia, Chapter 4

The Early Church's Doctrine of Inspiration

1. The ancient Church, with one unanimous voice, teaches that all the canonical writings of the Old and New Testaments ARE GIVEN BY THE HOLY SPIRIT of God; and it is on this sole foundation (and independently of the fragmentary information that human imperfection may acquire from them) that the Church founded her faith on the perfection of the Scriptures.
2. The ancient Church, following out this first principle, no less firmly maintains the INFALLIBILITY of the Scriptures as their sufficiency and their plenitude. She attributes to their sacred authors not only axiopistia, to wit, a fully deserved credibility, but also autopistia, to wit, a right to be believed, independently of their circumstances or of their personal qualities, and on account of the infallible and celestial authority which caused them to speak.
3. The ancient Church, viewing the whole Scripture as an utterance, on the part of God, addressed to man, and dictated by the Holy Ghost, has ever maintained that there is NOTHING ERRONEOUS, nothing useless, no thing superfluous there; and that in this divine work, as in that of creation, one may always recognise, amid the richest plenty, the greatest and the wisest economy. Every word there will be found to have its object, its point of view, its sphere of efficacy. It is in vigorously establishing and defending both these characters of the Scriptures, that the ancient Church has shown the elevated and profound idea she entertained of their divine inspiration.
4. The ancient Church has always maintained that the doctrine of holy Scripture is the SAME THROUGHOUT, and that the Spirit of the Lord gives utterance in every part of it to one and the same testimony. She vigorously opposed that science, falsely so called (1 Tim. vi. 20), which even in the first ages of her history, had taken a regular shape in the doctrines of the Gnostics, and which, daring to impute imperfection to the Old Testament, made it appear that there were contradictions between one apostle and another apostle, where there were really none.
5. The ancient Church thought that inspiration ought chiefly to be viewed, it is true, as a passive state, but as a state in which the human faculties, FAR FROM BEING EXTINGUISHED or set aside by the action of the Holy Ghost, were exalted by his virtue, and filled with his light. She has often compared the soul of the prophets and of the apostles to 'a stringed instrument, which the Holy Ghost put in motion, in order to draw out of it the divine harmonies of life.' -—(Athenagoras) 'What they had to do, was simply to submit themselves to the powerful action of the Holy Ghost, so that, touched by his celestial influence, the harp, though human, might reveal to us the knowledge of the mysteries of heaven.'— (Justin Martyr) But, in their view, this harp, entirely passive as it was as respects the action of God, was the heart of a man, the soul of a man, the under standing of a man, renewed by the Holy Ghost, and filled with divine life.
6. The ancient Church, while it maintained that there was this continued action on the part of the Holy Ghost in the composition of the Scriptures, strenuously repelled the false notions which certain doctors, particularly among the Montanists, sought to propagate respecting the activity of the Spirit of God, and the passiveness of the spirit of man in divine inspiration; as if the prophet, ceasing to have the mastery of his senses, had been in the state which the pagans attributed to their sibyls. While the Cataphrygians held that an inspired man, under the powerful influence of the divine virtue, loses his senses, the ancient Church maintained, on the contrary, that the prophet DOES NOT SPEAK IN A STATE OF ECSTASY and that one may distinguish by this trait false prophets from the true. This was the doctrine held by Origen against Celsus (lib. vii. c. 4); as also of Miltiades, of Tertullian, of Epiphanius, of Chrysostom, of Basil, and of Jerome, against the Montanists.
7. The ancient Church in her endeavours, by means of OTHER DEFINITIONS, which we shall not indicate here, to give greater clearness to the idea of divine inspiration, and to disentangle it from the difficulties with which it was sometimes obscured, still further showed how much she cherished this doctrine.
8. The ancient Church thought that if the name of action on the part of God is to be applied to inspiration, it must be understood to extend to WORDS as well as to things.
9. The ancient Church. by her constant MODE on QUOTING the Scriptures, in order to the establishment and defence of her doctrines; by her manner, too, of EXPOUNDING and COMMENTING on them; and, in fine, by the use which she recommends all Christians, with out exception, to make of them as a privilege and a duty; the ancient Church, by these three habitual practices, shows, still more strongly, if it be possible, than she could have done by direct declarations, how profoundly attached she was to the doctrine of a verbal inspiration.

And it is not only by her exposition of the Word that the ancient Church shows us to what point she held the entire inspiration of the Scriptures, as an in controvertible axiom; she will show you this still more strongly, if you will follow her while she is engaged IN RECONCILING THE apparent CONTRADICTIONS sometimes presented by the Gospel narratives. After having made an essay of some explanation, she does not insist upon it; but hastens to conclude, that whatever be its validity, there necessarily exists some method of reconciling those passages, and that the difficulty is only apparent, because the cause of that difficulty lies in our ignorance, and not in Scripture. “Whether it be so, or otherwise (she says with Julius Africanus), it matters not, the Gospel remains entirely true! This is her invariable conclusion as to the perfect solubility of all the difficulties that one can present to her in the Word of God.

10. The ancient Church was so strongly attached to the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit, and of his sovereign action in the composition of the whole Scriptures, that she made no difficulty in admitting at one and the same time the greatest VARIETY and the GREATEST LIBERTY in the phenomena, in the occasions, in the persons, in the characters, and in all the external circumstances, under the concurrence of which that work of God was accomplished. At the same time that she owned with St Paul, that in all the operations of this Spirit, it is one and the self-same Spirit that divideth to every man severally as he will (1 Cor. xii. 11), she equally admitted that in the work of divine inspiration, the divine causation was exercised amid a large amount of liberty, as respects human manifestations. And be it carefully remarked, that you will nowhere find, in the ancient Church, a certain class of doctors adopting one of these points of view (that of the divine causation and sovereignty), and another class of doctors attaching themselves exclusively to an other (that of human personality, and of the diversity of the writer's occasions, afl'ections, intelligence, style. and other circumstances). “If this were so," says Rudelbach, “one might justly accuse us of having ourselves forced the solution of the problem, instead of faithfully exhibiting the views of the ancient Church." But no; on the contrary, you will often see one and the same author exhibit, at once and without scruple, both of these points of view: the action of God and the personality of man. This is what we see, for example, abundantly in Jerome, who, even when speaking of the specialties of the sacred writers, never abandons the idea of a word introduced by God into their minds. This we farther remark in Irenæus, who, while he insists more than any one else on the action of God in the inspiration of the Scriptures, is the first of the fathers of the Church that relates in detail the personal circumstances of the Evangelists. This is what you will find again in St Augustine; this is what you will see even in the father of Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesarea, who gives so many details on the four authors of the Gospels, and who, nevertheless, professes the most rigorous principles on the plenary inspiration of the Canonical Scriptures.
11. The ancient Church shows us more completely still, by two other traits, the idea she had formed of divine inspiration, by the care she took, on the one hand, TO FIX THE RELATIONS which the doctrine of divine inspiration bore to the doctrine of the gifts of grace; and, on the other, To EXHIBIT THE PROOFS of inspiration.

In fine, although the ancient Church presents this spontaneous and universal agreement in the doctrine of inspiration, we must not imagine that this great phenomenon is attached, as some have been fain to say, to some particular system of theology, or may he explained by that system. No more must we regard this wonderful agreement as the germ of a theory that was to establish it, at a later period in the Church. No. The very assertions of an opposite opinion which, from time to time, made themselves heard on the part of the heretics of the first centuries, and the NATURE OF THE REPLIES that were put forth by the ancient Church, clearly demonstrate, on the contrary, that this doctrine was deeply rooted in the Church’s conscience. Every time that the fathers, in defending any truth by passages from Scripture, succeeded so far as to drive their adversaries into the impossibility of defending themselves, otherwise than by denying the full inspiration of the divine testimonies, the Church thought the question was decided. The adversary was tried; he had no more to say for himself; he denied the Scripture to be the Word of God! What more remained to be done, but to compel him to look his own ill-favoured argument in the face, and to say to him, See what you have come to ! as one would bid a man who has disfigured himself, look at himself in a glass? And this the fathers did.

Such are facts of the case; such is the voice of the Church.

Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia, Chapter 3