Page 4

logical, he reasoned, as Paul did; if emotional and contemplative, he
wrote as John wrote. All this is involved in the fact that God uses his
instruments according to their nature.

Hodge demonstrated this approach practically, for example, in his treatment of I Cor.10:8
when dealing with a numerical discrepancy between Paul and the Old Testament passage
being discussed at that point in the epistle. What does Hodge make of the difference? He
states (1988:178):

The infallibility of the writers [Hodge has in mind both Old and New
Testament figures] consists in their saying precisely what the Spirit of God
designed they should say; and the Spirit designed that they should speak
after the manner of men and call the heavens solid and the earth flat, and
use round numbers, without intending to be mathematically exact in
common speech. The Bible, although perfectly divine, because [it is] the
product of the Spirit of God, is perfectly human. The sacred writers spoke
and wrote precisely as other men in their circumstances would have
spoken or written, and yet under the influence as to make every thing they
said correspond infallibly with the mind of the Spirit.

With such descriptions, Hodge aimed to summarize an historic Christian understanding
of divine inspiration.

When B.B. Warfield wrote on the inspiration of scripture more than a generation

later, he discussed some of the variations Hodge had not admitted, despairing at one point
(1948:105) that "Wherever five `advanced thinkers' assemble, at least six theories as to
inspiration are likely to be ventilated." Yet he, too, stated that the scriptures were
simultaneously divine and human, i.e. they are truths originating with God and perfectly
conveyed by him to mankind, all the while preserving the natural propensities and styles
of the person. Warfield summarized the matter in this way (173):

The Church, then, has held from the beginning that the Bible is the Word
of God in such a sense that its words, thought written by men and bearing
indelibly impressed upon them the marks of their human origin, were
written, nevertheless, under such an influence of the Holy Ghost as to be
also the words of God, the adequate expression of His mind and will. It
has always recognized that this conception of co-authorship implies that
the Spirit's superintendence extends to the choice of words by the human
authors (human inspiration) and preserves its product from everything
inconsistent with a divine authorship thus securing, among other things,
that entire truthfulness which is everywhere presupposed in and asserted
for Scripture by the Biblical writers (inerrancy).

How do these two theologians of the Reformed branch compare with more recent
formulations in the larger evangelical survey? Attempting to speak for as many as
possible, one may consider the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy" formulated in