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Karl Barth on Holy Scripture’s Capacity for Error

The Origin of the Dictation Theory of Inspiration

In the Post-Reformation era, a century after the deaths of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the first and second generation reformers, the doctrine of inspiration of the Scriptures evolved into a dictation theory of inspiration, in which the biblical writers were the very "hands of god" and through the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, every word they wrote in the bible was without error and had been preserved without error. Karl Barth summarized these 17th century theologians well when he wrote "Should there be found even the minutest error in the Bible, then it is no longer wholly the Word of God, and the inviolability of its authority is destroyed" [CD I/2 p524]. This 17th century dictation theory was similar to the Islamic dictation theory of the Qur'an, and it was not limited to the original autographs of the bible, but even the extant copies were absolutely without error (even though some manuscripts had erroneous variants that could easily be corrected). For these Post-Reformation theologians, the Bible had replaced Jesus Christ had ceased to be the revelation of God.

In the Church Dogmatics I/2, §20.2 (c.f. pp. 524-526), Karl Barth provides many examples of 17th century theologians who affirmed a dictation theory of inspiration. (Barth's primary sourcebook for the following quotations was Heinrich Heppe's Reformed Dogmatics, which is a Protestant version of Lombard's Sentences.) Here are four examples that Barth cites as evidence:

  • "since if the true reading and pronunciation of the prophets is finally shown by the Massoretic scribes, then we would have been built up upon the foundation of the Massoretic scribes, and not upon the foundation of the prophets." (Polan, 1609)
  • "There is no error, even in minor matters, no lapse of memory, and there cannot be any place with falsehood in the entirety of Holy Scripture" (Lutheran theologian Abraham Calov, 1612 – 1686)
  • "It must be held that the Holy Spirit dictated in unmediated and extraordinary fashion, everything which was, and was to be, written. Both things and words, matters which the authors previously did not know or could not remember, as well as things which they did truly know, both historical and particular details, and universal dogmas both theoretical and practical, they learned these things, whether by sight, by hearing, by reading, or by meditation" (Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbert Voetius, 1589 – 1676)
  • "For if a single small verse of Scripture has been written with the unmediated flow of the Holy Spirit coming to a halt, then it would be easy for Satan to remove it (i.e. the inspiration of the Spirit) from a whole chapter, from a whole book, finally from the whole text of the Bible, and in consequence to take away the whole authority of Scripture" (Lutheran Johannes Andreas Quenstedt, 1617 – 1688) [1]

It may be possible to find spurious earlier examples, or find an example that is contemporaneous with the first reformers, but it was until the 17th century that dictation theory became the widely accepted nouveau theory.  

Inspiration Theory before the rise of Dictation Theory

Prior to the 17th century, the earlier Reformers including John Calvin, Martin Luther and others allowed for the bible to have a capacity for error (Barth's phrase) due to the human nature of the biblical writers that did not corrupt the revealed truth witnessed by the human authors of the bible. John Calvin believed the bible had a capacity for error and believed the the original autographs of the bible contained errors that did not undermine its true witness. In CD I/2, Karl Barth quotes another example from Martin Luther "There are two entities: God and the Scripture of God, which are no less than two entities, creator and creature of God." [2]. 

Before the Reformation theologians generally affirmed that the bible was without error, but this meant that the bible didn't intentionally deceive the reader, not that it was absolutely free from every kind of error imaginable. Barth provides a helpful quotation from Augustine that exemplifies the point that the bible was written by finite human authors using imperfect human words that cannot dictate the transcendent eternal god (c.f. Isaiah 55:8ff, Philippians 4:7):

"For who can speak (the truth) as it is? I venture to say, my brothers, perhaps not even John himself spoke it as it is, but rather as he was able? Since man has said of God, and indeed has been inspired by God, but he is nevertheless still man. Since he has been inspired, he has said something; if he had not been inspired, he would have said nothing. But since man has been inspired, he has not said everything there is to say, rather, man has said what he could" (Augustine of Hippo) [3]

Karl Barth's Theology of Inspiration

Karl Barth did not revert to the Pre-Reformation theology of inspiration of the scriptures, because he worked through the error of dictation theory in the 17th century to develop a new and better theory of inspiration of scripture in Threefold Form: Written, Revealed and Proclaimed. God has truly spoken through the human witness of the bible, despite the biblical writer's capacity for error. Deus Dixit!  The false dichotomy between an errant and inerrant Bible is rejected by Barth, because the bible has an indirect identity (Barth's phrase) with the Word of God (that is directly identified with Jesus Christ) despite the bible's capacity for error

The great value of Barth's theory of inspiration is that it points to living Jesus (as the Word of God) instead of the dead letter of a printed book. It also frees theologians to investigate the human origins and marks on the written scripture, and the productive result is a better understanding of the Bible due to its capacity for error, rather than fearing the Bible will explode if one minute error is discovered. 
 
Karl Barth on whether the Bible contains errors
 
I'll end this article with two quotations from the Church Dogmatics I/2, where Barth explains the Bible's capacity for errors:
"First, there is the truism that we cannot expect or demand a compendium of solomonic or even divine knowledge of all things in heaven and earth, natural, historical and human, to be mediated to the prophets and apostles in and with their encounter with divine revelation, possessing which they have to be differentiated not only from their own but from every age as the bearers and representatives of an ideal culture and therefore as the inerrant proclaimers of all and every truth. They did not in fact possess any such compendium. Each in his own way and degree, they shared the culture of their age and environment, whose form and content could be contested by other ages and environments, and at certain points can still appear debatable to us. “Man has said what he could”. This means that we cannot overlook or deny it or even alter it. In the biblical view of the world and man we are constantly coming up against presuppositions which are not ours, and statements and judgments which we cannot accept. Therefore at bottom we cannot avoid the tensions which arise at this point. We must reckon with the fact that this may be possible in points of detail, and we must always be ready for it. Instead of talking about the “errors” of the biblical authors in this sphere, if we want to go to the heart of things it is better to speak only about their “capacity for errors.” For in the last resort even in relation to the general view of the world and man the insight and knowledge of our age can be neither divine nor even solomonic. But fundamentally we certainly have to face the objection and believe in spite of it!"
...
"But the vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its capacity for error, also extends to its religious and theological content" [4]
also

6. As to when, where and how the Bible shows itself to us in this event as the Word of God, we do not decide, but the Word of God Himself decides, at different times in the Church and with different men confirming and renewing the event of instituting and inspiring the prophets and apostles to be His witnesses and servants, so that in their written word they again live before us, not only as men who once spoke in Jerusalem and Samaria, to the Romans and Corinthians, but as men who in all the concreteness of their own situation and action speak to us here and now. We can know that in the life of the Church, and indeed in its life with the Bible, it is a matter of this decision and act of God or rather of the actualization of the act of God which took place once and for all in Jesus Christ. In the whole Bible it is always a matter of this act. We can remember that the Bible has really already been for ourselves and others the place of this act. We can and should expect this act afresh. We can and should cling to the written word, as Jesus commanded the Jews, and as the people of Beroea did. We can and should search the Scriptures asking about this witness. We can and should therefore pray that this witness may be made to us. But it does not lie—and this is why prayer must have the last word—in our power but only in God’s, that this event should take place and therefore this witness of Scripture be made to us. We are therefore absolved from trying to force this event to happen. This does not allow us to be unfaithful or indolent. It is the man who is faithful in seeking, asking and praying, who knows that the faithfulness of God and not his own faithfulness decides. But we are completely absolved from differentiating in the Bible between the divine and the human, the content and the form, the spirit and the letter, and then cautiously choosing the former and scornfully rejecting the latter. Always in the Bible as in all other human words we shall meet with both. And we may differentiate between them as we do in the understanding of a human word. But the event in which the word of man proves itself the Word of God is one which we cannot bring about by this differentiation. The Word of God is so powerful that it is not bound by what we think we can discover and value as the divine element, the content, the spirit of the Bible. Again, it is not so powerful that it will not bind itself to what we think we can value lightly as the human element, the form, the letter of the Bible. We are absolved from differentiating the Word of God in the Bible from other contents, infallible portions and expressions from the erroneous ones, the infallible from the fallible, and from imagining that by means of such discoveries we can create for ourselves encounters with the genuine Word of God in the Bible. If God was not ashamed of the fallibility of all the human words of the Bible, of their historical and scientific inaccuracies, their theological contradictions, the uncertainty of their tradition, and, above all, their Judaism, but adopted and made use of these expressions in all their fallibility, we do not need to be ashamed when He wills to renew it to us in all its fallibility as witness, and it is mere self-will and disobedience to try to find some infallible elements in the Bible. But finally we are absolved from having to know and name such the event or events, in which Scripture proves and confirms itself to us as the Word of God. We have seen that as the events of eternal presence of the Word, as hours of God, they cannot be grasped in time or can be grasped only in their before and after, in recollection and expectation. It is enough—and this is all that is required of us—that we should constantly approach these events and proceed from them. Similarly we cannot know our faith in its eternal form as our justification before God, but only as a movement “from faith into faith” (Rom 1:17), which as such is not justified. We can give to ourselves and to others an account of our faith; but we can only do so in thankfulness and hope, without showing the basis of our faith. And that is how we stand in relation to Holy Scripture. We can and must be summoned by it to thankfulness and hope. In obedience to this summons it will be seen in the reality and the judgment of God whether and to what extent we participate in the event of the presence to others, does not lie in the sphere of human possibility and therefore cannot be demanded of us. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Therefore the presence of the Word of God is not an experience, precisely because as it is the divine decision concerning us. [5]

Note: This article was originally published January 13th, 2014 but was revised on July 24th, 2019.

Sources:

1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, §20.2 (c.f. pp. 524-526)

2. Barth. Ibid. p. 508.

3. Barth. Ibid. p. 507 [Augustine's John Tract 1.1, as quoted by Karl Barth]

4. Barth. Ibid. pp. 508.

5. Barth. Ibid. pp. 531-2.

6. Header background contains an image of Por Desconhecido - Codex Petropolitanus Gr. 34, manuscript of the New Testament, 041 (Gregory-Aland), Domínio público, source wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10387753

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