selected writers in the hope that they may speak for most evangelicals today.
In his three-volume Systematic Theology, Hodge claimed (1986:151) that "All Protestants
agree in teaching that `the word of God, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice'." Historically and
traditionally, at least, that had been the case when his work was first published in 1871-
73, though the doctrinal hemorrhaging that was beginning to occur in Hodge's own
ecclesiastical and academic back yard would surely have led him to clarify the claim
were he writing just a generation later. In his discussion of inspiration, which spanned
nearly forty pages, Hodge showed the importance of starting with the personhood of God,
noting (153-4) that God is "self-conscious, intelligent, [a] voluntary agent, possessing all
the attributes of our spirits without limitation, and to an infinite degree." He would go
on (154) to note that inspiration is a "supernatural influence" which is not part of the
general providence God exercises over the creation but is "produced by his immediate
efficiency" rather than employing "second causes." He distinguished this effect from
"spiritual illumination," calling acts of inspiration "extraordinary gifts...bestowed upon
particular persons," being designed (155) "to render certain men infallible as teachers."
He carefully distinguished between revelation, whose object is to communicate
knowledge, and inspiration, which secured infallibility and "preserved him [the recipient]
from error in teaching."
was doing) that "when God uses any of his creatures as his instruments, He uses them
according to their nature...angels as angels, men as men, the elements as elements." He
clarifies: "The sacred writers were not made unconscious irrational.... They were not
like calculating machines which grind out logarithms with infallible correctness." He
makes a particular point of clarifying what certain medieval and patristic theologians had
intended when they likened inspired prophets and apostles to "pens in the hand of the
Spirit" or "harps, from which He drew what sounds He pleased." Hodge states his
understanding firmly and repeatedly (157):
theory of inspiration. The sacred writers were not machines. Their self-
consciousness was not suspended; nor where their intellectual powers
superceded.... It was men, not machines; not unconscious instruments,
but living, thinking, willing minds, whom the Spirit used as his organs.
Moreover, as inspiration did not involve the suspension or suppression of
the human facilities, so neither did it interfere with the free exercise of the
distinctive mental characteristics of the individual. If a Hebrew [i.e. Jew]
was inspired, he spake Hebrew; if a Greek [i.e. Hellenistic Gentile], he
spake Greek; if an educated man, he spoke as a man of culture; if
uneducated, he spoke as such a man is wont to speak. If his mind was