Inspiration and Authority: Nature and Function of Christian Scripture

by Paul J. Achtemeier

Book Overview

"In an evaluation of the Scriptures as the Word of God, inspiration is an essential element. The long Protestant experience with this issue is both fruitful and painful, for many have drawn false... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565633636
• ISBN13: 9781565633636
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Rare, Short and Potent Book on the "Inspiration" of the Biblical Text.

This is a rare book on inspiration in the sense that it is short (only 176 pages). It is also rare in the regard it has for presenting multiple sides clearly and fairly. I cannot fully explain my understanding of what "divine inspiration" means in a book review. I am still trying to figure out a tenable expression of it in the first place. But suffice it to say that "inspiration" doesn't mean what I used to think that it did. This book is likely to help its readers navigate that territory with greater care, even if it does not leave them with nice and tidy definition. A sampling of questions that Achtemeier's book explores is: Does "inspiration" refer to the authors of the Bible's books or to their words? Does it have to do with the meaning behind the message, the Spirit behind the message, or the God who stood behind the Spirit who stood behind all of the authors, scribes and editors of the words? The issues are far more complex than I was ever taught in church. Because it is so succinct, the author doesn't spend much time discussing the multiple authors, redactors, editors and versions (especially in the Old Testament) of the text that have filtered their way in to the scriptures as we have them now. But, if you have studied that lurching process and been dismayed at its haphazard and seemingly underhanded way of compiling what we have as "the Bible," this book can calm some nerves and maybe even rekindle some confidence in the text. However, IF a reader thinks that the Bible as we have it today is the same as that which all of our faithful forbears (and the original audiences) possessed, then a lot of this book may be lost on him or her. This is well worth the read, but if you are new to the subject, buckle up. Thanks for reading, -C. Lambeth

A must read for all who study the Bible

All those who treasure and study the Bible should read this book. Paul Achtemeier loves the Bible and treats it as the inspired Word of God. He is also a leading Bible scholar who takes modern Biblical scholarship seriously. One of the struggles faced by students of the Bible on a college or seminary level is how to respect the inspired content of Scripture and at the same time what to do with modern critical study of the Bible. For some, modern scholarship can feel threatening to the Bible and to their faith. In a very readable way, Achtemeier walks the reader through the struggles and the inadequate answers offered by both conservatives and liberals to the question of inspiration. He offers a way for Christians to continue to treasure Scripture and to respect its inspiration and authority while being willing to take Scripture seriously and study it with all of the resources available to us in modern scholarship. I wish I would have read this book when I was in seminary. It should be required reading for all those in advanced Biblical study, but it is written in a way that is accessible to all readers.

sensible and impassioned erudition

Nearly two decades after initial publication under a different title, this lightly revised and expanded second edition renews Paul Achtemeier's irenic arbitration of a discussion which tends in more acerbic directions. In seven accessible chapters, he seeks to understand how the Bible is different. After a brief apologia for the study, chapter 1 ('Locus and Mode of Inspiration') tries to locate the phenomenon we call 'inspiration'. Seeking a point of departure on which all Christian readers can agree, Achtemeier treats claims for inspiration as a way of saying that the Bible continues to speak to readers today as it has spoken to readers in the past. From that modest agreement, however, the paths quickly lead us in divergent directions, for it is more problematic to state exactly how the voice of Scripture continues to be heard. Without saying so at this early stage, Achtemeier is drawing us towards examination of the common assumption that an individual author is responsible for each biblical book, and therefore that the manner in which inspiration was experienced by that person is among the most pressing of questions. This view of inspiration depends upon the analogy of how a prophet receives revelation. Eventually, Achtemeier will argue that the results of modern biblical criticism oblige us to abandon so individualistic a conception. Achtemeier sketches two historical lines of approach to inspiration: 'inspired authors' and 'inspired content', usefully pausing now and again to identify ancient and modern proponents of each Tendenz. Indeed, one of the main contributions of his approach is to help the modern reader to perceive that Christians have from the beginnings of the faith struggled with what sometimes appears to be a merely modern problem. Achtemeier argues that the Greek notion of the 'possession' of poets and prophets-whether or not this means that the possessed individual cedes control of his faculties-was taken over in Jewish and early Christian circles to explain the phenomenon of sacred Scripture, persisting in its effects well into the Reformation, where it was argued that authorship by a prophet is the very sign and seal that a given book is inspired. The other view-though not necessarily antagonistic to the former one-holds that inspiration has its locus in the words of scripture rather than the prophetic person who wrote them down. For Achtemeier, this inclination culminates in dictation theories found in Protestant Scholasticism, wherein the emphasis is on the entire inerrancy of the product, whether or not the prophet responsible for it fully understood its meaning. Lying behind this historic debate are attitudes to certainty and how this is to be achieved by the believer. Does the work of faith depend upon a knowledge that is publicly verifiable and immune to doubt? And what must be said of the relationship between revelation and inspiration? Does revelation reside principally in the saving events (the Exod