(Excerpted from Is the Bible Alive? by C. J. Sodergren, Rock Island, Illinois: Augustana Book Concern, n.d.)

“The Inspiration of the Scriptures is a cardinal doctrine of the Christian Church.” 3

“The Deity of Christ is the altar, and the Inspiration of the Scripture is the pulpit, of the sanctuary in which a Christian worships. They are the presence and the voice of God.” 3

“The inspiration of the writer was temporary; the inspiration of the writing is perennial and eternal. In its ‘beginning’ —that is, in its first principles—the Word of God is ‘settled forever in the heavens’ of sacred Scripture.” 20

“In its structure we may say that the Bible has its counterpart in Christ. As the incarnate Word is human and divine, so the written Word is human and divine. Its human nature is what any reader thinks when he reads and understands the words and sentences of the letter, namely, its history, laws, prophecy, poetry, proverbs, correspondence, and so forth. Its divine nature is the Spirit of Truth which lives in and acts through the letter, shedding abroad the higher light of God’s own mind and begetting a new life in the heart of the believer.” 20-21

“Its ‘mother’ was the Church, who furnished the material of its human nature; but its origin and divine life is from God. The ‘Son of Man’ is therefore the ‘Son of God.’ That is, in the Bible also ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’” 21

“When we approach the Bible, we approach Christ.” 21

“The letter is its investiture; Christ is its substance and essence.” 21

“But while the voice is the voice of God in Christ, the language of the Bible is human language. Our own abstract conceptions of truth must clothe themselves in images of material things and be expressed in corresponding language. So the thoughts of God must descend in the language of men, if they are to reach us at all. To lift us up, God had to come down within the range of our thoughts and experience. ‘He humbled himself’ in a kenosis of Scripture. In this written Word, as in the incarnate Word, He ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.’ The Bible became very much like other books in its outward form and appearance, even to its ‘nationality;’ but in it ‘dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily.’” 23