Welcome back everyone. This is lesson three lesson three is entitled inspiration and an errancy This is the lesson where we're going to dive a little bit deeper defining and trying to understand better what these two concepts are What is inspiration we say the the Bibles the inspired would have God? What does that mean and what do we mean when we say that it is in errant? It is without air because really these two statements the Bible is inspired and the Bible isn't errant are two sides of the same coin You really can't separate one from the other one flows into the other So what I'd like to do if you had your notes in front of you for this lesson here open up We're on page one of the notes and we want to do a couple of introductory remarks here to try to understand these truths of biblical inspiration and biblical errancy and we want to understand later So we're gonna look at proper models or understandings of what inspiration is and what it is not what in errancy is and what it is not As we go through this lesson here But what I like to do is to segue from this last lesson on divine revelation So if you remember really really quickly what we did in the last lesson was look at what natural revelation is or has we can see the existence of God This is a defined dogma of the faith We can know that God exists using our our noggins right using our p-brains We could just know that God exists by observing the natural world observing the intricacies and the creation of ourselves Whether it's the macro level of the universe or the mountains or the sea or the earth or whatever and the micro level of the atom We could know that there needs to be an intelligent design for this.
It's absolutely true So there's so many scientists out there that just are converted because they study the natural world and they're in their In their converted so that's natural revelation Then we look at how that's limited to a certain extent We can know that God exists But we don't know who God is unless he reveals himself to us that's divine revelation So we looked at the divine revelation how it's transmitted throughout all the generations through scripture and tradition We quoted Saint Paul I know this is the topic of the sentient with Protestants But hey, I converted to Catholicism I was raised to Protestant these verses convinced me you got a shot of a doubt the Bible alone is insufficient as the transmission of God's revelation And we look at all of that in the authority of the church for interpreting divine revelation all that stuff So now as a segue really if you want to look at that as a premise a segue then obviously The inspiration of scripture because this is one of the means a special primary mean by which God communicates to us Right, so there's a logical flow here And what I'd like to do is just simply read the first paragraph of the catechism of the Catholic Church is one of my favorites It's often quoted because it's so beautiful So look at me here in the notes and we're going to see this concept of how God freely reveals himself out of love He doesn't need to God is perfectly sufficient unto himself, right? He doesn't need creation in any way shape or form, but he freely creates out of love So let's read this together here catechism number one It says God infinitely perfect and blessed in himself and a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life For this reason at every time in every place God draws close to man He calls man to seek him to know him and to love him with all of his strength He calls together all men scattered and divided by sin into the unity of his family the church to accomplish this when the fullness of time They'd come God sent his son as redeemer and Savior in his son and through him He invites him to become in the Holy Spirit his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life In quote that is that is so beautiful like you could just highlight that whole thing in yellow because it's so beautiful And it's the perfect introduction not just to the catechism And it really is a beautiful introduction to the whole catechism and all the themes of God's love and his desire to save us Why? Well, by the way, I should clarify this before I move on salvation is much much more than just forgiveness of sin I say this all the time to my students forgiveness of sin is one aspect of salvation But the purpose of saving us from our sins is in order that we would become God's adopted children That's the thing that runs from Genesis all the way to Revelation We are called to be God's adopted children and this is only accomplished with Jesus Christ That that right there is a nutshell of all of scripture Okay, a nutshell of all of salvation history So this is the purpose of revelation my friends really just to summarize last lecture is God wants to save us freely without Compulsion because he loves us and he wants to give us a share of his own divine life So if we accept the premise of again of divine revelation then this conclusion of inspiration makes sense God speaks forth his word in a unique way in sacred scripture in order to reveal himself to us so that we could become Saved from our sins free from our sins and receive God's own divine life Okay, so script think of this the scripture is inspired by God because he desires to reveal and communicate himself to us in a human language That we can understand that's it right? That's the purpose of the inspired word God because God desires to communicate to us to reveal himself to us ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ That's why we should cherish the scriptures as I said if you remember a few weeks back I talked about how scripture is a head and center It's more than just any other book and we look through all of that stuff I'm back in lesson one you can go back and listen to that lesson in the audio library if you want to but I got this great quote for You here from Saint Bernard de Clairvaux here And you know it says the person who thirsts for God eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired word Knowing that there he is certain to find the one for whom he thirsts that is beautiful the person who thirsts for God studies and meditates That's prayer right you prayerfully study We'll talk a lot about that in lesson 10 But eagerly studies and prayers over the scriptures because you know you're gonna encounter the God for whom you're so first beautiful Beautiful line from Saint Bernard, okay?
All right, so let's that's enough to say for the introduction Let's take the rest of our time together and divide this lecture into two halves number one We want to look at inspiration what it is and what it isn't and we'll look at some scripture passages Which not we don't want to use circular reasoning here We don't want to say the Bible is inspired because the Bible says it's inspired I used to say that as a Protestant Christian and that's called circular reasoning that's not the way to approach it We need an outside authority to say this is inspired and this isn't we're gonna talk about all of that But then in the second part we're going to look at in erancy What does it mean that the Bible is in errant and without air and then we'll look at in the future lecture various examples on? Some famous examples that people say oh the Bible is wrong on these different points I'm gonna go with you But we're gonna look at some of the big easier to show you that no the Bible is He's telling the truth it is not contradicting itself in these examples Okay, and then if we had a bajillion years we could go through all the rest of the examples All right, so part one here in your notes into kick this off I want to read you to it's a rather lengthy, but it's very very important quote from the catechism paragraph 106 It's quoting the verb of him But this cat this catechism quote is really gonna set up the four major topics for understanding in their inspiration Okay, so let's read it here together those divinely revealed reality So there you go divinely revealed reality is so you we got to talk about divine revelation first Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in sacred scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit For holy mother church relying on the belief of the apostles holds that both books So the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety with all of their parts are sacred and canonical because Written under the inspiration of the spirit they have God as their author and have been handed on to the church herself in composing the sacred books God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and their abilities so that with him acting in them and through them They as true authors consigned to writing everything and only those things which you wanted So now that's a little bit long But really what we have here is four main points and what I did it in your notes here I put letters ABC and the so you can see what we want to look at here in the rest of this Well really the first part of this passage or this lecture number one What does it mean to be inspired by the Holy Spirit? Again? What it means what it doesn't mean?
We'll look at the various models that have been proposed out there And what the church sides with number two or B if you want to look at it All the scripture whole and all of its parts is inspired See point three that the inspired books have been handed on to the church herself as as they've just received these books as inspired Okay, if in number four or D here, they're true authors human authors are true authors. They're not robots. They're not secretaries We're gonna unpack all of this here in the rest of the lecture. Okay.
All right, so let's look first here at letter A What does it mean to be inspired by the Holy Spirit? Okay, so the number one verse that everyone goes to both Catholic as well as Protestant as well They should is second Timothy chapter 3 verse 16 It's a very beautiful passage is right here It says all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training and righteousness That the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work Okay, so there's a lot of what this verse is saying and there's a lot of what this verse is not saying But I want to zoom in here on the line. It's inspired by God They have no stos is one way to pronounce it you can ask five different scholars and let give you five different institutions But the most those is inspired by God. What does that mean?
So I've got the Greek word in your notes, so you don't have to say it's Greek to me Let's unpack that a little bit God breathe It's a very beautiful expression here and it really evokes if you think about it the first Creation the original creation back in Genesis 1 It means that God breathes forth his word and the breath of God evokes the spirit of God in Genesis 1 In Hebrew the word is ruach, right? It's the breath. It's the wind is the spirit of God really the spirit of God is the great meaning here And the original creation account if you go back to Genesis chapter 1 what you find is that God is there is spirit is hovering above the waters If in God speaks let there be light and then there is light and he goes through all the days of creation and this brings forth the Birds and the bees and the land and all the animals and mankind etc Okay, but there's the presence of the Holy Trinity right there in the first creation God speaks Everything everything comes into being well here It's so beautiful because what you have is kind of a the means of the new creation right where God is God breathe They have no so so God breathes forth his word and you see the presence again of the Holy Trinity There's God speaking breathing through the spirit his word which is of course Jesus Christ And there's a lot of Trinitarian theology we could do we don't have the time to do that right now But you see the presence of all three persons of the Trinity in this one Greek word God the father the God the God the Holy Spirit Right with the breath the Ruach kind of is they echo in the background and Old Testament there in the word of God which is Jesus Christ So it evokes the first creation because what's going on here is God is bringing about a new creation through Jesus Christ the incarnate word And he's being revealed through the inspired word here in scriptures Okay, so God breathes his own divine life his own divine words into the words of the sacred authors and an active intention away He breathes forth his word Jesus Christ his true Jesus Christ into the words of the human authors to communicate himself to us And so what that means is that God is the the first author of human of scripture He is the true the primary the original author of scripture that means the origin of the Bible is divine the origin of the Bible is supernatural It's not just Matthew marker Luke or Moses or Jeremiah whomever Paul writing down whatever the writing down It's that God in an active way communicates his truth breathes forth in Trinitarian way his word his truth through the words of the human authors That's what we mean by at least looking at 2 Timothy here. That's what we mean by the worthy of no substance God breathed Okay, so the origin supernatural divine is not Saint Paul sitting there in prison writing something in the gods I like what you did there.
Let me now inspire it. No God acts first through the human authors Let's go look at a number of other verses here We want to look at Peter and we're gonna look at some various models of what we mean by this and what we don't mean by this So let's flip the page here in your notes, and then we're gonna continue I'm Dr. Nick Thank you so much for watching this clip I hope you enjoyed it if you did and you want to access the entire lesson in the entire course come visit us over at scripture Intrition.com and join our community of students You'll be able to access all of my courses in the audio library plus you'll be able to access my live courses whenever I teach a new topic on scripture or the Catholic faith God bless you