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Commentary on the Gospel According to Luke
Commentary on the Gospel According to Luke Author:James Stark Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. INSPIRATION OF THE GOSPELS. Inspiration and Revelation synonymous—Words of Christ the only parts in the Gospels which are revelations—Inspirati... more »on not in the words, but in the things which the words teach. Bkfoee entering on the examination of Luke's narrative, it is absolutely necessary to examine the question as to how far that narrative is inspired; that is to say, whether it was given by a revelation from God; or wherein its inspiration resides, if it have any. As a preliminary, therefore, we must endeavour to understand what is meant by inspiration, or rather what the Scriptures mean, and what is the proper idea of inspiration; for the Scriptures and we may attach very different ideas to the same word, in consequence of modern ideas being quite different from those of the ancient oriental people, for whom the Old Testament Scriptures were originally drawn up. According to the Scriptures, when it is stated that anything was ' given by inspiration of God,' it is meant that God revealed his will to some person who gave utterance to or wrote down God's message, and who was so constrained by the Holy Spirit, that the words which he uttered or wrote down were those of the Holy Spirit, and not those of the man himself. Peter, in speaking of the prophecies uttered by the prophets of old, assigns to their prophetical utterances the meaning here explained; for hesays, ' For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit' (2 Pet. i. 21). That passage of itself proves that in the Scriptures the word ' inspiration' is synonymous with ' revelation,' so that the phrase 'given by inspiration of God' means 'given by revelation from God,' and necessarily implies that that which was revealed was som...« less