(In the last article, we showed how Dr. Ralph Janssen’s Views of Scripture led him to a denial of the miracles of Scripture.  There were one or two other matters which his views of inspiration affected.  To them we turn in this article.)

In order to understand the issue that is involved in this question, it is necessary first of all to say a few things about the character of Scripture itself.

Because Scripture is the infallibly inspired record of God’s revelation, the whole of Scripture is one harmonious book.  It has a unity about it which puts every part of it in harmony with every other part.

The one principle and truth which gives unity to the whole of the Scriptures is the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God reveals Himself in Scripture through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Scripture can be compared with a beautiful portrait of Christ with every part of the portrait a necessary and perfect addition to the whole.

Now because Scripture is that way, every book of the Bible must have something to say about Christ.  Christ is revealed in every part of Scripture.  As a Bible teacher said once many years ago in Bible class: “Wherever the artery of Scripture is cut, it flows with the blood of the Lamb.”

But at the same time, every part of Scripture, while it is surely a part of the portrait of Christ, reveals Christ in its own unique way.  Some parts of Scripture are like the background of the portrait.  Other parts are like the bottom part of the face.  Other parts compose the eye.  But each part has its own place, and in the unity of the Scriptures the portrait is perfect and complete.

Now part of the study of the Bible includes determining how each particular book of the Bible contributes to the unity of the whole Bible; i.e., how each book helps understand Jesus Christ; how each book contributes to the portrait; what place in the portrait each book occupies.

Dr. Ralph Janssen also was busy in this work in his teachings in the Seminary.  But because he did not believe that Scripture was completely the Word of God, he had wrong views too of the unity of Scripture.

There were especially two mistakes which he made, both of which were related to each other.  For one thing, Janssen taught that the only way to determine the unique place which any book occupied in the whole of Scripture was to learn who (other than the Holy Spirit) wrote the book, why he wrote in prose rather than poetry, why he wrote the book at all, to whom he wrote the book, what were his motives in writing it, what influences were affecting him while he was writing, and on and on and on and on….

Now the fact of the matter is that most of the time the Bible does not answer all these questions.  We are, therefore, left to guessing.  And so vast quantities of time are spent in guessing the answers to these questions, and scholars write more books than one can count to publish their guesses.  But every scholar has, of course, his own guess.

All the while, because these questions are not answered in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is telling us that we do not need to know the answers to these questions in order for us to learn how any given book helps us to understand Christ.  We can learn these things from the Bible itself in most instances.  But when the Bible does tell us that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, then we ought to believe the Holy Spirit.  The trouble is that those who think it important that all these questions need answering, will not, as a general rule, believe the Holy Spirit when He gives us the answers.

At any rate, Janssen spent vast amounts of time on these questions and came up with some strange answers.

As we noticed already, Janssen denied that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, and insisted that they may very well have come from Babylon even before Moses’ time.  Janssen believed that the book of Ecclesiastes was the rather pessimistic work of a very skeptical philosopher who had no hope for the future because all in life was vanity.  Janssen believed that the Song of Solomon had nothing to say at all about Jesus Christ (as was true of other Books, such as Judges, Esther, etc.) but was only an oriental love song, somewhat erotic.  Daniel was not the author of the prophecy that goes by his name, but an unknown author used a literary device when claiming to be Daniel.

And so, Janssen went about really mutilating the Bible in the interests of his own notions about inspiration.

There is a warning here.  Today the denial of infallible and inerrant inspiration is very common and widespread.  That it leads to heretical views of Scripture and even denials of the miracles is obvious.  But insofar as it is done in our day, nothing new is really being said.  It was done already many years ago when Janssen was teaching in Calvin Seminary.