Biblical Inspiration: What’s Wrong With An Incarnational Model?
Many evangelicals have had a habit of drawing a parallel between the divine and human aspects of Scripture and the divine and human natures of Christ.
This matter is discussed by A.T.B. McGowan, in his book The Divine Spiration of Scripture (Apollos, 2007, pp119-121). McGowan cites Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation as attempting to solve some of the questions facing evangelicals with regard to various issues raised by Old Testament scholarship by appealing to an incarnational model of biblical inspiration.
One of the problems with an incarnational model are, according to McGowan, is that it not taught in Scripture itself. Another, more fundamental, problem is that only God is divine and therefore only God can have a divine nature. Of course, the Scriptures have divine characteristics, but they cannot have a divine nature.
John Webster puts it well:-
Like any extension of the notion of incarnation (in ecclesiology or ethics, for example), the result can be Christologically disastrous, in that it may threaten the uniqueness of the Word’s becoming flesh by making ‘incarnation’ a general principle or characteristic of divine action in, through or under creaturely reality. But the Word made flesh and the scriptural word are in no way equivalent realities. Moveover, the application of an analogy from the hypostatic union can scarcely avoid divinising the Bible by claiming some sort of ontological identity between the biblical texts and the self-communication of God.
