This is not meant to be a comprehensive theology of inspiration, of course, but it occurred to me that, as we read the Scriptures and think about what God is saying about himself to us through them, that two things can be true at the same time:
- God was truly at work in the stories told in the Scriptures, and God was truly at work in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and God is truly at work through the Scriptures to speak to us today everything we need for life and salvation, and
- Ancient peoples could only describe how God was at work among them from within their metaphysical assumptions about God and the world.
Thus, we need not assume that their specific descriptions of how God was working are “objectively true,” just as we don’t necessarily assume their metaphysical assumptions about God and the world are true.
For example, today we don’t assume that mixing a little wine with one’s drinking water will help people with their stomach ailments, but this is clearly what Paul assumed when he wrote to Timothy to do this very thing. Likewise, we need not assume that Naomi’s best explanation for her tragic situation – “The Lord’s hand has gone out against me” (Ruth 1:13b) – is the absolute truth of the situation.
Ascribing the cause of the events in one’s life and in the world to God was a typical semitic way of giving honor to God. Just because the Book of Ruth records that Naomi described her situation this way doesn’t mean we must do so also. That kind of “flat” reading of the Scriptures isn’t a way of taking them seriously. It actually doesn’t take them seriously enough.
God worked and spoke through humans, and thus through the language they spoke, and the worldview they held. And God speaks to us today through the Scriptures, but we have very different assumptions about the universe and about divinity than they did, and thus we must learn to interpret. We must learn how to hear the voice of God’s Spirit for us, today, in a fresh way that speaks from within our metaphysical assumptions in the same way God spoke to them from within their metaphysical assumptions.
