Is the Bible too human to be a perfect divine revelation? Recently I (re-)watched the video of the 2016 debate between Dr Bernie Power of Melbourne School of Theology and Islamic scholar Shaykh Soner Coruhlu.[1] Toward the end of the debate, Shaykh Coruhlu raises the issue of the reliability of the New Testament, given that it is written by human hands. Dr Power didn’t have opportunity to reply in the time left for the debate, but this provoked me to think through what could have been said.
How can we respond to those, who assert that Scripture is an altogether too human book? In this article I want to explore a range of answers to that question. Although I will often be in dialogue with Islam, I am confident that it will be helpful to a wider audience, as this is an objection that many people raise, and even a doubt Christian themselves sometimes entertain.
The Divine-Human Scriptures Point to God’s Power
Our secular friends and our Muslim friends who refuse to accept the Bible as God’s infallible word do so because they cannot imagine God could ensure a piece of literature be both fully human and fully divine. Ironically both the secular person and the Muslim thereby limit what it is possible for God to do.
It comes as no surprise that our friends who deny that God could inhabit a human body would also deny that God’s words could also be human words. To deny the character of Scripture as a divine-human book is, by extension, to deny that God could ever come into our world, our times, our lives, but must inevitably be detached from us. To affirm the divine-human word is to affirm God’s immanent involvement in our everyday, often ordinary, lives.
What Form Should a Book of Direct Revelations Take?
If God were to speak to us with the ‘language of heaven’ would we be able to understand such a revelation? Could it ever be translated or would it be mystical and sublime, suitable only for incantation?[2] Many world religions approach spiritual concepts with the presumption that they must be esoteric and hard to understand.[3] But in the case of the Scripture, the emphasis is on their clarity and intelligibility to all who open them with a humble heart (Deut 6:6–7; Ps 19:7; Mat 11:25–26). Because of God’s graciously accommodating himself to our human languages and brain activity, he has made himself knowable to us.
The human nature of Scripture thus encourages comprehension and translation. As Paul emphasises in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verse 19: ‘in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.’ Graeme Goldsworthy writes:
A docetic [not-truly-human] Bible has no human dimension, no historical and cultural context conditioning the meaning of the words. The docetic Christian thinks it is very pious to treat the words of the Bible as conveying immediate spiritual meaning without regard to what the original writer intended to convey.[4]
Christians rightly work hard at understanding the original context of the readers and the author’s intent. While the Scriptures are sometimes challenging to understand (2 Pet 3:15–16), understanding nevertheless is possible. So also, we are motivated and confident in our efforts to translate the Scriptures into other human languages so that more people can understand—see how 1 Corinthians 14 spells out the loving imperative of translation for the purpose of edifying comprehension.
God Has Shown His Kindness to Us in the Accommodation of Scripture
God’s stunning accommodation to humanity in the incarnation of his Son reveals his love for us. So too his gift of the Scriptures is an act of accommodation: to graciously make himself known to human beings—see how Paul applies Moses’ words about the law to the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus in Romans 10:6–9 (cf Deut 30:11–14). As John Stott writes:
In Scripture [God] spoke his Word through human words to human beings in precise historical and cultural contexts; he did not speak in culture-free generalities. Similarly, his eternal Word became flesh, in all the particularity of a first-century Palestinian Jew. In both cases he reached down to where the people were to whom he desired to communicate. He spoke in human language; he appeared in human flesh.[5]
To meet Christ is to meet God, though few seemed to anticipate that that was possible. In the same way that many baulked at seeing God in Christ 2000 years ago, so many today respond to seeing God’s word in the humanity of Scripture. Just as people were affronted by the normality of Jesus, the carpenter from the unfashionable town of Galilee (Mk 6:3), so the humanity (even the ‘ordinariness’) of Scripture leads people today to doubt it can be God’s revelation to us.
The Divine-Human Scriptures Are Made Possible Because of Our Identity as God’s Image Bearers
In the Qur’an, a connection between humanity and Allah is less apparent, such that the Qur’an almost acts as a mediating barrier between God and humanity. Our Muslim friends would deny that humanity can be conformed to his likeness (2 Pet 1:4) because of their underlying assumption that the divine and human breach is too wide.
But the doctrine of the image of God (Gen 1:26–27), assumes there is a meaningful, if limited, analogy between God and humanity. God has made us in his image to know him personally. Timothy Ward goes so far as to say: “Our language can be made by God to speak truthfully of him because our language has its origin in him and in some way is like his own.”[6]
The Literary Forms of Scripture Resonate with Our Lives
In Scripture we find stories to capture the imagination, law to instruct the heart, poetry to touch our feelings, apocalyptic to unveil the reality of our world, and wisdom to shape our character. The diversity of genres in Scripture is well suited to explore and have an impact on the whole gamut of human lived experience.
The Scriptures can also be seen as a special outworking of the creation mandate, as people write creatively in different genres, only in this case under the direction of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21). Divinely inspiration dignifies our humanity, including in its literary and emotional breadth.
The content of Scripture and its humanity resonate with our lives. In contrast, the Qur’an is limited to one literary form only: that of proclamation. This fits with the Islamic belief that the Qur’an was given by the angel Gabriel with the command to recite. But it leaves Muslims dependent on other texts (the traditions, or Hadith[7]) for knowledge as to how to live day-to-day.
These are just some of the ways in which Christians should rejoice in the divine-human nature of our holy Scriptures. This is not something to be embarrassed about, but something to delight in, something to further commend the goodness of our God and his gospel.
[1] The debate, ‘Has the Qur’an Been Changed?’, can be viewed on Dr Power’s website, www.berniepower.com.
[2] As with the mystical ‘Om’ chant of Hinduism, which is regarded as the sonic representation of the divine. So also for many Muslims the Qur’an is not so much used for understanding as recitation. Many Muslims memorise large chunks of the Qur’an in Arabic without understanding it.
[3] For example, Gnosticism, allegorical readings of Scripture, Mormonism, some forms of folk Islam, and the more philosophical pathways of Hinduism and Buddhism.
[4] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom: Carlisle, UK, Paternoster, 1987.
[5] John R W Stott, Between Two Worlds: London, UK, Hodder and Stoughton, 1982.
[6] Timothy Ward, Words of Life, Nottingham: IVP, 2009.
[7] Ironically, here Muslims do concede some kind of divine-human authority because they seek to replicate as closely as possible the life of Muhammad as shown in the Hadith or traditions.
