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Rating: 
Summary: The best treatment of Biblical Inspiration
Review: As the title suggests, this book is about the inspiration of the Bible. I. Howard Marshall, an evangelical Christian scholar, looks into this important Christian belief. In the opening pages, Marshall examines various views on the inspiration of the Bible, from total and complete inerrancy, to the belief that the Bible is inspired in the same way a good piece of literature is. While it is hard to figure out what view Marshall himself takes because he is so fair in his treatment of all views, I am sure that he views the Bible as the infallible word of God. This does not mean he thinks the Bible is inerrant however. He means that God divinely preserved all that he wanted us to know, and with the precision he wanted us to know it. So there are indeed some areas in the Bible that are unclear, and perhaps that is okay. Marshall is not a big fan of the divine dictator view that God simply told the writers what to write. Rather he believes that there was a concursive method. This means that the writers said what God wanted them to say, but by means of oral and literary traditions, and within the authors' own styles, rather than as a result of some type of divine trance. Marshall asks many questions, such as "What Does the Bible say about its own inspiration?" and "How are we to interpret the Bible?" The book is made up of 125 pages of answers in plain English. Marshall's view may not harmonize with many people's view that the Bible is totally inerrant, and that there can be no error, whether historical or grammatical. However, I must say I found his treatment of the issue to be extremely relevant after I took a secular Bible course which emphasized the inconsistencies in the Bible. In a way Marshall helped me keep the faith after taking such a class. Don't think that Marshall obscures the facts. He does not twist anything to keep his theory from falling. I must say I enjoy his writing style tremendously. I rarely became uninterested when reading this book. I wanted to find out what was on the next page, mainly because his answers were so important to me spiritually at the time. I would recommend this book for those who want a well thought out, and even-handed (Marshall presents the strengths and weaknesses of all popular theories of inspiration) treatment of the issue of Biblical Inspiration. Anybody can benefit from reading this book, even if he or she does not reach the same conclusions of the author.
Rating:
Summary: The best treatment of Biblical Inspiration
Review: As the title suggests, this book is about the inspiration of the Bible. I. Howard Marshall, an evangelical Christian scholar, looks into this important Christian belief. In the opening pages, Marshall examines various views on the inspiration of the Bible, from total and complete inerrancy, to the belief that the Bible is inspired in the same way a good piece of literature is. While it is hard to figure out what view Marshall himself takes because he is so fair in his treatment of all views, I am sure that he views the Bible as the infallible word of God. This does not mean he thinks the Bible is inerrant however. He means that God divinely preserved all that he wanted us to know, and with the precision he wanted us to know it. So there are indeed some areas in the Bible that are unclear, and perhaps that is okay. Marshall is not a big fan of the divine dictator view that God simply told the writers what to write. Rather he believes that there was a concursive method. This means that the writers said what God wanted them to say, but by means of oral and literary traditions, and within the authors' own styles, rather than as a result of some type of divine trance. Marshall asks many questions, such as "What Does the Bible say about its own inspiration?" and "How are we to interpret the Bible?" The book is made up of 125 pages of answers in plain English. Marshall's view may not harmonize with many people's view that the Bible is totally inerrant, and that there can be no error, whether historical or grammatical. However, I must say I found his treatment of the issue to be extremely relevant after I took a secular Bible course which emphasized the inconsistencies in the Bible. In a way Marshall helped me keep the faith after taking such a class. Don't think that Marshall obscures the facts. He does not twist anything to keep his theory from falling. I must say I enjoy his writing style tremendously. I rarely became uninterested when reading this book. I wanted to find out what was on the next page, mainly because his answers were so important to me spiritually at the time. I would recommend this book for those who want a well thought out, and even-handed (Marshall presents the strengths and weaknesses of all popular theories of inspiration) treatment of the issue of Biblical Inspiration. Anybody can benefit from reading this book, even if he or she does not reach the same conclusions of the author.
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