No. 4 I, too, am glad to be in your class again, Prof. Ziegler. I�m Nick. I have a question for you�I have read that verbal inspiration is something that came up in the 17th century and that Luther did not believe it. What do you say to this? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Well, I think that's the thesis you hear among mainstream or liberal Lutherans. Because as you know, Luther is kind of the Godfather. So you have to claim his authority for whatever you do. And if Luther said, "Well, I don't really care" is relatively rare. You have to be a really liberal Lutheran to say that. If you're kind of a mildly conservative Lutheran, of course you try to get Luther on your side. So you say: Well, you know, yes, we are different from our fathers. And we are different from the theology of the 19th Century. And we're different from the theology of the 17th Century. But all it is really is we are going back to the true theology of the Reformation. That was kind of the thinking and the battle cry of the Luther Renaissance in the 20th Century. "We are going through all these later traditions, through these scholasticisms of the 17th Century. And Luther really thought like we did." Okay. Well, it's not impossible. But that is -- it should make us a little bit suspicious. Because it's like these claims that when somebody comes and says: Well, nobody understood what Jesus said, "until I come." And I'll tell you that it's kind of -- well, it could be that in 2,000 years of church history everybody was just kind of blind or a little bit stupid. But what do you think is really the likelihood of that? But okay. These are just preliminary remarks. Now, the -- the real question in that context is of course not what did Luther think? Why do we believe in verbal inspiration? Even if Luther would not have believed in it, would that mean we shouldn't? The question is really: Does Scripture say anything about verbal inspiration? And so I'm kind of shifting gears here and saying -- well, really I would like to talk first: Does Scripture talk about verbal inspiration? And then we can talk about did Luther believe in verbal inspiration. And then when we look at Scripture we see that in Scripture it is quite common that God is speaking so that man's word is God's word. There is this identity there. And the main Bible passages -- and I'm just quoting a few. When Moses is called to be a prophet in Exodus 4, God says, "I will put words in your mouth." So what Moses says is God's word. The same is true of the prophets in the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 1 when God calls Jeremiah to be his prophet he says, "I will put words in your mouth." And in the big debate about who is a false and a true prophet in Jeremiah 23, the difference between the true and the false prophet is the prophet that had a dream. "Let him tell the dream and he that have my Word, let him speak my Word faithfully." The true prophet has God's Word. That's why you read that introduction in the prophets over and over again: "Thus saith the Lord." It's not "Well, I think the Lord has told me. Maybe the Lord has told me." But no, that's what God says. "What I tell you is God's word." That's a pretty big claim. And you might kind of shrink back and say, "Well, how can you be sure?" But that's the claim the prophets had. The Lord speaks and then the prophet says it. And of course the same is true and even more so for Christ. Christ claimed to be -- he is the Word of God and he speaks the Word of God. And Christ affirms the Old Testament. So what we see there is that in Scripture, we find as a very common theme the word of man is the word of God under certain circumstances. That is when God gave it to them. And you know, this is nothing about verbal inspiration. Now, verbal inspiration is oftentimes kind of seen as a theological bugaboo. Verbal inspiration, it's reactionary or fundamentalist or it's kind of scholastic. No, verbal inspiration simply means these words spoken or said by man are the words of God. Like we see from the prophets. As it was done to Moses. As it was done with Jesus himself. So now we see that also then later on with Jesus with the apostles. The apostles are sent out by Christ that they preach in his power and with his authority telling the Word of God. And Paul for example talks about himself in I Corinthians 2:13 that he speaks words taught by the Spirit. It's like a prophet. The words he says are not his own but they are the Word of God. And in I Thessalonians 2:13 we have also the statement that the Thessalonians received Paul's word as the Word of God. So in Scripture we have all these messengers that speak the Word of God. Verbal inspiration. But this Word of God is not only oral but it is also written. God commands himself that his words are taken down in written form. He speaks to Moses in Exodus 17:14. And you have it also in Jeremiah. Otherwise we rarely have the explicit command. But we see also then from the time in the New Testament. And of course the Old Testament in its entirety is used as the Word of God. And one interesting case is in Matthew 19 when there had been -- the question of divorce is discussed. Now, Jesus says: Well, didn't God say therefore a man will leave father and mother and adhere to his wife? Well, if you look that up in Genesis 2, it's actually not God who says that. It's the author. It's Moses who says that. But Jesus introduces it as: Well, God said. It's a very interesting passage. Because it's just, you know -- it's not an explicit statement about inspiration. But it shows how evident it was for everybody. You didn't have to make a fuss about it. But you could quote any passage in the Old Testament and say actually God said that. And Jesus affirms that. The Old Testament -- the authority of the Old Testament is affirmed, confirmed by Jesus himself that this is the -- this is the Word of God that you can take a passage and can say: Thus saith the Lord. And not only those passages that again you can go with your highlighter or you can get a Bible where not only the words of Christ are in red but maybe the words of God are in red in the Old Testament. Although, I've never seen such an edition. But maybe it's a marketing gimmick. But not only the words that are printed in red as direct speech of God in the Old Testament but all of it. Again, verbal inspiration. Not more and not less. The authority of the Old Testament is of course affirmed in that famous passage on inspiration in II Timothy 3:16 where Paul writes -- start with 15: From childhood on you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness. That at the very least says something about the Old Testament. It might also say something about the New Testament, the emerging canon actually because in I Timothy 5:4 the gospels are actually quoted as Scripture. But just for the Old Testament, you have the other word inspired. It's translated as inspired. ***Theopneostus is the Greek word. And the Latin translation the Vulgate translated it as ***divinitus inspirata. And that's where we get inspiration from. ***Theopneos is God breathed literally. So all Scripture is God breathed. First of all, the Spirit of God is here seen as the author. And it's Scripture that's God breathed. Okay? It's a book that is called God breathed. Not just the message. Not just part of it. But the entire book. And as I said, that at least refers to the Old Testament. But it can also be the New Testament. In the New Testament the authority of the New Testament also rests really on Christ. Christ sent his apostles. And he promises them the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit will guide them in all truth and will remind them of all the things that have happened. The apostle is the ambassador, the messenger, the ***Shalia in Hebrew. The one who is authorized and whose word is as good as the word by whom he was sent. So the apostolic Scriptures are the word of Christ. You can't drive a wedge between Christ and the apostles. Sometimes that's done if the apostle says something that is -- you don't like and you say: Yeah, well, it's just Paul. But Jesus was really much nicer or he was much more affirming or whatever. You can't do that. We have Christ's word only in the word of his apostle. Okay. We have the word of Christ only in the word of his apostle. And that was intended by Christ. You might regret it that Christ didn't sit down and say: Hey, let's write my memoirs. But it brings home the point that again, the authority of Christ continued in the apostolic office. And so that we have no direct writing by Christ but we have only the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. That we have the epistles of Paul, Peter and John is not a lack. Because these people were not just eyewitnesses. Some of them were. Some of them weren't. But they were authorized messengers guided by the Holy Spirit. So that their writings are now not simply their books but they are Holy Scripture. And you can see that in a way when you look for example at the beginning of Matthew. At the beginning of Matthew it starts out the book of the genealogies or ***bibli skinezios. And what he does there is he alludes to Genesis where you have that formula over and over again. Matthew in a way is writing Scripture. So is John by the way when he starts out "In the beginning was the Word." Well, that is an allusion to Genesis 1:11. He is writing the new Genesis. So sometimes you hear: Oh, no they were authors of the New Testament. They were just kind of writing out of an occasion, all occasional writings. No; no. They were aware that what they were writing is not just: Okay, I had a book contract from Jerusalem Publishing House and I have to write my memoirs. No, they were writing Scripture. And it was recognized as Scripture already in the apostolic community. As I said, in I Timothy 5 where there is a quote from the gospels and it is introduced by Paul as: Scripture says. Scripture says and it is connected with an Old Testament quote. It's on the same level as the Old Testament. So verbal inspiration again which means nothing but that the word of a man is the word of God is not something that has been developed in the course of church history but is a teaching of Scripture itself. And you find it in the early church throughout. And of course you find it in Luther. Luther was not a liberal that kind of looked at Scripture and then went there with scissors and pasted to find out what actually is the Word of God because that's the consequence. If you deny verbal inspiration you have to say: Well, Scripture is not the Word of God but it contains the Word of God. And then you are off to a merry search with Winnie and -- Winnie the Pooh and his friends. You are looking for the -- not for the Heffalump but you are looking for the Word of God. And of course what you end up with, you never find the Heffalump and you never find the Word of God. Because it is then tailored according to your ideas. You come up -- again, find a copy of Thomas Jefferson's New Testament. It's such a nice example. He had the same opinion. Okay. What's usable of the New Testament? The moral teachings. So he actually did a literal cut and paste job of the New Testament. And what was Jesus? Well, he was a spitting image of Thomas Jefferson and his times. And if you do it now -- and people have done it. You know, the Jesus Seminar of Infamous Memory did it in a way, you end up with somebody -- a mild teacher or whatever is right now in. He could be the first new man who is so tender or compassionate. Or he can be so kind of apocalyptic prophet like in the time after World War I when things went to pieces and the time was right for something like that. You never find the Word of God. The Word of God is no longer an authority outside of you. But it becomes a reflection of you. You really look into a mirror. And one German author in the 18th Century said once: Books are like mirrors. If a monkey looks into it, the reflection will not be an apostle. Now, that's a nasty statement. But in a way that's what's happened. The Scripture then becomes not a light that enlightens you but a mirror. That's why the doctrine of verbal inspiration is so important. Because otherwise, the ship of the church has no rudder anymore. It drifts by the winds of the times. And we see that in Christianity all around us. Luther actually did believe in verbal inspiration. For that just a little quote from somebody who himself did not believe in inspiration. That is the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. He wrote: In the Reformation doctrine of inspiration the following points must be decisive: The reformist took over unquestioningly and unrecertifiably the statement on inspiration and indeed the verbal inspiration of the Bible. As it is explicitly and implicitly contained in those Pauline passages which we have taken as our basis, even including the formula that God is the author of the Bible and occasionally making use of the idea of a dictation through the biblical writers, which is kind of the epitome of the bad verbal inspiration theory. Dictation. How could it be otherwise says Karl Barth not with less but with greater and more rhetorical. Seriously they wanted to proclaim the subjection of the church to the Bible as the Word of God and its authority as such. Luther is not inconsistent when we hear him thundering polemically at the end of his life. Therefore we either believe wrongly and holy and utterly or we believe nothing. The Holy Ghost doth not let himself be severed or parted that he should let one part believe truly and the other part falsely. For it is the fashion of all heretics. They begin first with a single article but they must all be denied and all together like a ring which is of no further value when it has break or cut or a bell which when it is cracked in one place will not ring anymore and is quite useless. So Karl Barth who rejected verbal inspiration said, "Well, of course all of the Reformers" -- he's a Calvinist. So he includes Calvin and Zwingli. Other Reformers believed in inspiration. So he's at least honest. So those people who say, "Oh, no, Luther is really like us," it's just as honest in a way or it's bad scholarship whatever you want to use. It's a thesis that is borne out of the need of justification of one's position and the embarrassment that even though you are supposedly a Lutheran, you in a central point do not follow Martin Luther.