Yes, Davis seems not to understand the fundamentalist view of inspiration. There is a liberal doctrine of "inspiration" that teaches that God inspired the ideas and left it to the writers to choose the words to express those ideas, but the quickest way to get a debate started with a fundamentalist is to suggest that this is the way that the Bible was written. They will insist that God decided the *very* words that the writers should use; hence, their term "verbal inspiration."
In November 1991, I began a written debate in *Christian News,* an ultra-conservative Lutheran publication. My opponent was William Bischoff, pastor of a Lutheran church in Bridgeton, Missouri. In his first rebuttal installment, Bischoff said this: "In opposition to your AGNOSIS (ignorance or lack of spiritual discernment), I believe that God moved the men who wrote the Holy Bible so that the *very* words they wrote and the very thoughts they expressed were given to them by God and miraculously preserved from *every* possibility of error. I further believe that Holy Scriptures 'since they are the Word of God, contain no errors or contradictions, but are in *all* their parts and words infallible truth, also in those parts that treat of historical, geographical, and *other secular matters*'" (Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, 1932). "Other secular matters" would, to the fundamentalist mind, include anything and everything that does not relate to what they call "faith and practice." In other words, they are claiming that anything that their God inspired would by necessity be perfect.
Immediately after the quotation just cited, Bischoff said, "I will go even further since Jesus went further. I believe that the Bible is not only verbally inspired but is also *totally* accurate in its tense, mood, voice, and case (in the original autographs) because Jesus says so." (He cited some scriptures here in support of his "argument," but they are not relevant to showing what Bischoff believes about the total accuracy of the Bible.) Later he said, "It may seem that the choice of words, phrases, tense, voice and mood is entirely in the hands of the individual writer, but the finished product is *always* 100% in the hands of God." (More scriptures quoted, but I have cited Bischoff on this point to show that he would not agree with Davis's libertarian view.) Afterwards, he said, "Verbal inspiration has nothing to do with the weaknesses of the instruments that God used. God is the real author of the Scriptures, and God has no lapses of memory and he makes no mistakes." Then finally, he said in summation of his rebuttal, "Since the Bible is, whether men believe it or not, 'The Word of God,' it goes without saying that it is infallible and contains no mistakes. How could it, if God is the Author? God speaks from the fullness of omniscience--how could he err?" This final statement is the king pin of verbal inspiration that I have been trying to get Davis to understand. Inerrantists believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent, so it isn't possible for him to make errors of ANY kind, not even trivial ones. Thus they believe that "the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (Psalm 19:7). My efforts have been directed at trying to get inerrantists to see that there is a situation in the Bible (duplication of information with variation) that is logically inconsistent with this postion.
That whatever God does is perfect and free of all defects is clearly the position of Bible fundamentalists, so all I ask Davis to do is just put aside his philosophical jargon for one posting and explain to us in plain language why an omniscient, omnipotent deity who chose the *very* words when he was inspiring men to write would have to inspire a second, third, and fourth attempt at writing an infallible biography of his son. To do so, he must put aside his "libertarian" theory, because it simply does not represent the fundamentalist view of inspiration. If he could ever see that and simultaneously understand that I address my articles in *TSR* to those who hold this fundamentalist view, I think much of the misunderstanding in this matter would dissipate.
F. Till