Gaussen – The Divine Inspiration of the Bible

This work by Louis Gaussen, The Divine Inspiration of the Bible, is translated from German (I think, but from another language). One of the key concepts he treats is the concept of theopneustia, which is the Greek adjective, “God-Breathed” or inspired. He looks at different aspects of the Bible’s inspiration.

The Divine Inspiration of the Bible

The Divine Inspiration of the Bible
By Louis Gaussen

Version 1.2 David Cox, [email protected] 5/31/2018 Reformatting

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Biography of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (November 5, 1851 – February 16, 1921) was professor of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. He served as the last principal of the Princeton Theological Seminary from 1886 to 1902. After the death of Warfield in office, Francis Landey Patton took over the functions of the office as the first president of seminary. Some conservative Presbyterians[1] consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Biography of BB Warfield

Warfield was born near Lexington, Kentucky on November 5, 1851. His parents were William Warfield and Mary Cabell Breckinridge, originally from Virginia and quite wealthy. His maternal grandfather was the Presbyterian preacher Robert Jefferson Breckinridge (1800–1871), the son of John Breckinridge, a former United States Senator and Attorney General. Warfield's uncle was John C. Breckinridge, the fourteenth Vice President of the United States, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. His brother, Ethelbert Dudley Warfield was a Presbyterian minister and college president. His fourth cousin twice removed was Wallis Warfield Simpson, whom Great Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated his throne in order to marry.

Education of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Like many children born into a wealthy family, Warfield's childhood education was private. Warfield entered Princeton University in 1868 and graduated in 1871 with high honors. Although Warfield studied mathematics and science in college, while traveling in Europe he decided to study theology, surprising even many of his closest friends. He entered Princeton Seminary in 1873, in order to train for ministry as a Presbyterian minister. He graduated in 1876.

Ministry of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

For a short time in 1876 he preached in Presbyterian churches in Concord, Kentucky and Dayton, Ohio as a "supply pastor" — the latter church calling him to be their ordained minister (which he politely refused). In late 1876 Warfield and his new wife moved to Germany where he studied under Christoph Ernst Luthardt and Franz Delitzsch. Warfield was the assistant pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland for a short time. Then he became an instructor at Western Theological Seminary, which is now called Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He was ordained on April 26, 1879.

In 1881 Warfield wrote a joint article with A. A. Hodge on the inspiration of the Bible. It drew attention because of its scholarly and forceful defense of the inerrancy of the Bible. In many of his writings, Warfield attempted to demonstrate that the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy was simply orthodox Christian teaching, and not merely a concept invented in the nineteenth century. His passion was to refute the liberal element within Presbyterianism and within Christianity at large. Throughout his life, he continued to write books and articles, which are still widely read today.

Taken from Wikipedia.org article on Warfield

Works of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Dr. Edwin A. Abbott on the Genuineness of Second Peter (1883)
Some Difficult Passages in the First Chapter of 2 Corinthians (1886)
The Canon of the New Testament: How and When Formed (1892)
The Witness of the Stars (1893)
Number in Scripture (1894, 1921 4th revised edition)
The Right of Systematic Theology (1897)
Acts and Pastoral Epistles Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Vol. 26 of The Temple Bible (1902)
The Power of God Unto Salvation (1903)
The Lord of Glory : A Study of the Designations of Our Lord in the New Testament with Especial reference to His Deity, (1907)
The Westminster Assembly and its Work (1908)
Commentary on Revelation (1909, revised and corrected)
The Religious Life of Theological Students (1911)
Concerning Schmiedel's "Pillar-passages." (1913)
The Plan of Salvation (1915)
The Bible, The Book of Mankind (1915)
Faith and Life (1916)
The Saviour of the World (1916)
Counterfeit Miracles (1918)
Are They Few That Be Saved? (1918)
The Divine Origin of the Bible
Biblical Doctrines
Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy
Studies in Theology
The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible
The Making of the Westminster Confession
The Emotional Life of Our Lord
The Person of Christ According to the New Testament
Counterfeit Miracles
An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament
Are They Few that Be Saved?
The Lord of Glory: A Study of the Designations of Our Lord in the New Testament with Especial Reference to His Deity
Perfectionism: Articles reprinted from periodicals, etc. edited by Ethelbert Dudley Warfield, William Park Armstrong, and Caspar Wistar Hodge (1931)
Calvin and Calvinism (1931)
The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, edited by Samuel G. Craig; with an introduction by Cornelius Van Til. (1948)
Biblical and Theological Studies, edited by Samuel G. Craig (1952)
Sermons and Articles by Warfield
A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith
Authority, Intellect, Heart - In Warfield's Authority, Intellect, and Heart, he identifies these three channels through which the truth of God is brought to man, and truth then owns that person.
The Formation Of The Canon Of The New Testament - Warfield's The Canon of the New Tesatment is a brief article by Warfield (Presbyterian) explaining the Canon of the New Testament.
The Rights of Criticism
The Theology of John Calvin
The Theology of Grace - Warfield's Theology of Grace is a short work on Augustine & the Pelagian Controversy.

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Table of Contents of Divine Inspiration of the Bible

1. Definition of Theopneustia
2. Scriptural Proof of the Divine Inspiration
3. Brief Didactic Abstract of the Doctrine of Divine Inspiration
4. Examination of objections
5. Inspiration of Evasions
6. On Sacred Criticism, in relations, it bears to Divine inspiration
7. Conclusion
8. Analysis
9. Footnotes

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More Works on Inspiration-Inerrancy

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Every Christian should be vitally concerned with the verbal or plenary inspiration of the Bible. On this issue, the truthfulness of Christianity stands or falls. If the Bible, for example, is not totally inspired, the Christian must elevate himself to the position of a judge to determine which parts are and which parts are not inspired. After he has made that human judgment, he must humble himself to the status of a believer, thus relegating his trust to his own wisdom. His faith, as a result, rests in himself rather than in God.

So argues L. Gaussen in Divine Inspiration of the Bible, originally entitled Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. First published in French and later translated into English in 1841, this classic work was written to answer the unbelieving rationalists who sought in the 17th and 18th Centuries to reduce the Bible in the minds of men to human production. Gaussen’s objective was “to set forth, establish, and defend the Christian doctrine of Divine Inspiration.” That doctrine, to him, is that the Bible is fully inspired. He, therefore, wrote, “to establish by the word of God that the Scripture is from God, that the Scripture is throughout from God, and that the Scripture throughout is entirely from God.”

Gaussen lived in Geneva, Switzerland at the beginning of the 19th Century when the influence of German and French rationalism began to effect the National Church of Switzerland. Along with Robert Haldane, Merle D’Aubigne, and others, Gaussen led the opposition to this infidelity. They fought it with such uncompromising conviction that the Evangelical Dissenting Church had to be established to receive all who were dissatisfied with the National Church. They also started a school of theology in which Gaussen served as “Professor of Systematic Theology.” Theopneustia, an outgrowth of his opposition to rationalism and of his work as a professor, became the classic answer to objections to verbal inspiration.

The professor’s approach to the subject is twofold. The first part of the book is positive. He begins with a clear and minute definition of the Bible doctrine of verbal inspiration and then follows with a careful and detailed analysis of scriptures that demonstrate the truth of his definition. The remainder of the work, constituting more than half of the book, is negative and contains a forthright consideration of the objections which rationalists offer.

Gaussen’s book is not an antique, of value only for display in a museum of ancient history. The objections he answers are essentially the same ones still bandied about by today’s rationalistic counterparts, the modernists. Gaussen deals, for example, with the variations in the Gospel accounts, devoting special attention to the reports of the resurrection. He also considers alleged historical and scientific inaccuracies, supposed loss of inspiration through manuscript variations and translations and proposed contradictions. Readers who have been favorably impressed with the incomparable value of Warfield’s The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible and have returned again and again to reread it will be similary affected by Gaussen’s Theopneustia.

Serious Bible students live at an extremely opportune time when so many of the classic works are being formatted for e-Sword. Students of Scripture will want Gaussen’s work in their e-Sword library and will likely refer to it often as they face objections to the verbal inspiration of the Bible.

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