Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 48:191 (Jul 1891)
Article: The Divine Immanency
Author: James Douglas

BSac 48:191 (July 1891) p. 400

The Divine Immanency

Rev. James Douglas

[Continued from Vol. 46. p. 72]

The Relations Of The Doctrine Of The Divine Immanence To Inspiration

Notwithstanding the fact that the analysis of the word “inspiration” in its true and original signification, especially as given in the New Testament, affords no ground whatever for the development of a mechanical theory, yet such theory has been commonly held in some form by Bible-interpreters. The original significance of inspiration is inbreathing. In the New Testament (2 Tim. 3:16) we find the word θεόπνευστος, “God-breathed.”

God is Spirit and the breathing of the Divine Spirit into the human spirit must produce the effect of re-enforcing the human spirit that is thus made recipient of the Divine Spirit, itself the source of the human spirit. The very word θεόπνευστος is itself a statement of the doctrine of the divine immanence in inspiration, and denotes not external or mechanical, but internal or immanent action; not mediately, as one human spirit by the media of words as expressions of thought acts on another, but immediately, as the Divine Spirit alone can act on the human spirit, because it alone is source and fountain of all life and intelligence.

The mechanical theory of inspiration seems to originate in the failure to distinguish the difference in the relations which the divine personality sustains to human personality,

BSac 48:191 (July 1891) p. 401

and those which one human personality sustains to another. The Creator and Father of our spirits, as the life, the originating and sustaining life, of our spirits, alone holds such relations to our spirit as to render it possible for him to become an inbreathing power of inspiration. All the analyses of the action of one human spirit on another fail to illustrate or explain the action of the Divine Spirit, as a power of inbreathing, or inspiration, in its relations to the soul, which is its creation and of which it is the sustaining life. The action of one human spirit upon another must necessarily be as an external power; but that of the Divine, by the very term inspiration, or inbreathing, is presented to us as an internal vivification and energizing. The theory, which is irreconcilably opposed to the mechanical, is found in the analysis of the word “inspiration” itself; so that we can but regard a mechanical inspiration as a contradiction in terms. And this contradiction cannot be evaded by the allegation that the source is external, for the question under consideration is not of origin, but of mode of action. How d...