picture. In practice, we may instead have the equivalent of an adoptionistic view of
inspiration. God looks down at what various people are saying. Those words he approves
he "adopts" as his own, and they gain the stamp of his approval. But their meaning is
merely human meaning. We then do obtain a univocal human meaning, but still such that
the human meaning is the meaning of God. But the cost is an adoptionistic model, at odds
with the picture at Mount Sinai.
being, but is careful never to go beyond the limits of strictly finite human functioning.
Again, the meaning is strictly the human meaning, at the cost of a heterodox model of the
relation of the divine and the human.
not harmonize with the picture of Mount Sinai, where meaning originates in the most
emphatic way from God himself. Nor do they fit the OT instances of long-range prophetic
prediction, such as predictions of the coming of the Messiah. Such long-range prophetic
prediction is impossible to normal unaided human beings. In OT times, the hearer or
reader of such predictions has only two obvious choices. On the one hand, if the prediction
comes merely as a human-generated meaning, then it is only a speculative possibility, not a
real promise to be believed. On the other hand, if the prediction arises preeminently from
God's intentionality, it can be believed. To receive such a prediction as it ought to be
received tacitly requires reckoning with divine intention as something greater than what is
merely human.
what follows is not to be treated as merely a question of the human prophet's own normal
ideas--even if those ideas have been providentially controlled by God. It cautions the
reader not to think merely in terms of what he already knows about his neighbor Isaiah or
Micah.
a literary whole does have a human author. But that human author is inviting us in Genesis
3:15 not merely to focus on his human interpretation of Genesis 3:15, but on the fact that
God said it. The human writer of Genesis need not have totally understood what God said.
All that is required is that he faithfully recorded it. So we are pushed by the human written
product to pay attention to the divine source of meaning.
of God. It is not psychologically or religiously normal for him to ignore God in favor of an
exclusive focus on the human author. Because of the majesty and awesomeness of God,
the godly reaction is to have God himself and his speaking in focus. Because God