4. Debate about Revelation and Inspiration within Adventism
5. Towards a Biblical Interpretation of Revelation-Inspiration
6. Biblical Model of Revelation-Inspiration
Fernando Canale
In this section, we bring together our analysis of biblical evidence gathered thus far. How do the biblical understanding of God, the diversity of His operations in the process of creating the contents of Scripture (revelation), and the communication of it in oral and written ways (inspiration) shape our understanding of R-I? We shall seek to describe what can be designated a Biblical Model.
Earlier we discovered that the classical statements of Paul and Peter on inspiration (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21) set the general parameters within which we have attempted to understand the Holy Spirit’s “guidance” and “moving” of human agencies involved in the process of writing Scripture. Since those statements did not distinguish technically between the processes of origination of contents and of writing, we should understand their statements on “inspiration” as applying to both, which we technically analyzed in the sections on “revelation” and “inspiration.”
Summary: We must understand the divine inspiration of Scripture, of which Paul, Peter, and Ellen White spoke, as including at least the following points:
1. Divine “guidance” or “moving” acted directly on the human agency in the R-I process.
2. The divine “guiding” or “moving” of human agencies followed the various ways of divine providence working within the flux of historical events, not as God’s timeless, absolute sovereign power working by way of eternal decrees and overruling the freedom of biblical writers.
3. God guided the reception of information and the formation of ideas in the biblical writers by means of a historical process of divine cognitive revelations given to them in a diversity of patterns.
4. The divine “guidance” and “moving” of human agencies embraced multiple patterns of divine operations, both in the revelation and inspiration processes (Heb 1:1) with strong emphasis on the former. That emphasis allows for the inclusion of the dynamics of “thought” inspiration in the Biblical Model.
5. The whole of Scripture was both revealed and inspired. In this sense the Biblical Model of R-I is plenary, for it embraces the entirety of Scripture.
6. The Holy Spirit’s “guidance” or “moving” harnessed the freedom and literary skills of human agencies in their historical and spiritual development. Divine overruling of the human agency was not the main pattern of divine “guidance” or “moving” but a possible last resort to avoid human misrepresentation.
7. Because the guidance of the Holy Spirit respected human modes of thinking and writing, we should not expect to find in Scripture the absolute perfection that belongs only to the inner life of the Trinity. On the contrary, we should not be surprised to find in Scripture imperfections and limitations that essentially belong to human modes of knowing and writing.
8. Although the divine “guiding” and “moving” operated on human agencies, through them it reached the words of Scripture. In this sense the Biblical Model of R-I is “verbal.”
9. Divine “guidance” in the process of writing did not assure absolute divine perfection, but in their entirety the Scriptures truthfully and trustworthily represent God’s teachings, will, and works.
In short, God, not the human writers, is the author of Scripture in the sense that He is the source of content, action, and interpretation.
The Biblical Model of R-I differs from the encounter, thought, and verbal theories of inspiration in significant ways. The Biblical Model and the encounter theory of inspiration share a personal existential element, but the latter denies any communication of truth in the encounter.
With regards to the nature of information generated in revelation, the Biblical Model envisages concrete, historical, spatio-temporal truths, whereas the “thought” revelation theory generates timeless, nonhistorical truths. While for some “thought” inspiration stops short of affirming divine guidance in the writing of Scripture, the Biblical Model affirms it.
In common with the “verbal” theory of inspiration, the Biblical Model affirms that the Holy Spirit guided biblical writers not only while receiving information and revealed ideas but also in the process of writing Scripture in its entirety. However, the two models depart at the grounding level of the foundational hermeneutical presuppositions that determine the way in which we understand God’s supernatural contributions to the formation of Scripture. The “verbal” theory assumes God acts timelessly and sovereignly, overruling the human freedom of biblical writers. In contrast, the Biblical Model assumes that God’s providence acts within the spatio-temporal flux of concrete human freedom and history.
Finally, we must not forget that we are dealing with a mystery that we know and understand only in part. Therefore our model of interpretation should be understood as a first step rather than the final word. As a first step, it leads us in a quite different theological path from current models operating within present Adventist and Christian theologies. The importance of a correct, though partial, understanding of R-I centers on its hermeneutical role in the task of doing Christian theology. We need to turn our attention now to the hermeneutical role of the Biblical Model of R-I outlined in this chapter.