The Greek term has…nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of “spiring” or “spiration”. What is says of Scripture is, not that it is “breathed into by God” or is the product of the Divine “inbreathing” into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, “God-breathed”, the product of the creative breath of God… When Paul declares, then, that “every Scripture”, or “all Scripture” is the product of the Divine breath, “is God-breathed”, he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically Divine operation.

Benjamin B. Warfield (1851–1921), Theologe

Related Bible passage: 2TI.3.16

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God

Occasions: For Reflection

Benjamin B. Warfield

Benjamin B. Warfield war ein US-amerikanischer presbyterianischer Theologe und lehrte von 1887 bis 1921 am Princeton Theological Seminary. Er gilt als einflussreichster Systematiker der sogenannten Princeton-Theologie und prägte maßgeblich die reformierte Lehre von der Verbalinspiration und Irrtumslosigkeit der Bibel sowie den Cessationismus. Für Bibelleser bietet sein Werk eine historisch wirkmächtige dogmatische Begründung für die Zuverlässigkeit des Bibeltextes, steht jedoch wegen seines als rationalistisch kritisierten Zugangs auch in der theologischen Diskussion.

All quotes by Benjamin B. Warfield (14)

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The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

Martin Luther

The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

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Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Madeleine L'Engle

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