Pasa graphe theopneustos, every scripture is God-breathed. How glorious the thought! These words warm the heart and thrill the soul. Theopneustos (Theo, God; pneo, to breath) is translated "God-breathed." We stand in awe of the fact that every time we take the Bible in hand and begin to peruse its pages we are reading words in which the breath of God is incarcerated. To inspire literally means "to breathe into."

When Paul wrote that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16), as Moule suggests, he taught that the breath of God was in each scripture as man's breath is in his words, making them to be the vehicle of his thought (Quoted in W. T. Purkizer, Exploring the Old Testament, p. 24). "It is our contention that every Book of the Bible, that every chapter in every book, that every paragraph in every chapter, that every sentence in every paragraph, that every word in every sentence, that every syllable in every word, and that every letter in every syllable throughout all of the Bible (original autographs) were inspired of God" (Thomas B. Warren, The spiritual Sword, Vol. 1, Jan. 1970, No. 2, p. 3).

How grateful we are that the Bible is not the product of human ingenuity (cf. 1 Thes. 2:13; Mat. 10:19; 1 Cor. 2:13). Jerome (4th century) called the Bible the "Bibliotheca A Divina," The Divine Library. It has also been designated as the true and lively Word of God, meaning not only living, but life-giving. One statistician compiled a list of more than one thousand books that have been written in opposition to the Bible. But one book produced by man just like the Bible would be stronger proof of its human origin than a thousand written against it. If it is human, it should be easy to produce another like it.

Therefore it is apparent that the Bible did not originate with man. Sir Frederic Kenyon, esteemed Director of the British Museum for some twenty-one-years, said, "The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries."

We naturally expect the Bible to testify to itself, but we quickly add that even secular writers and non-Christians of every age of the world have agreed that this book called the Bible is either inspired or it came from an unknown source.

We unhesitatingly accept the former and strongly deny the latter because we believe it adds weight to our contention that we serve God on the basis of a written book which came from Him.

Theories Of Inspiration. There are four theories of inspiration. First, there is Natural Inspiration. This theory holds that the writers of the Bible were inspired in the same way that Milton and Shakespeare were inspired. Next, there is Partial Inspiration - The Bible is inspired in spots. It contains the Word of God. Then, there is Plenary Inspiration - This teaches that "...Inspiration extends to every part of the Bible, embracing history, poetry, prophecy, doctrine, precept, and all, whether revealed, known, or copied, and that it caused the writers to write just what God wanted written, and to write it accurately." Finally, we have Plenary, Verbal Inspiration - This means that every word in every part of the original manuscripts of the Bible is given by inspiration of God, or given by God through the Spirit. This is not verbal dictation, although it is possible that some parts, such as the law of God through Moses (the law of Moses), the messages through the prophets, etc., may have been dictated. This applies to the Bible in the original languages, Hebrew and Greek; not to the various translations.

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