Review: The Invention of the Inspired Text by John C. Poirier

Recently I taught a church Sunday school class on the doctrine of Scripture, defending the Protestant view of inspiration. During the class, I referenced a debate that had taken place earlier between Trent Horn (a Roman Catholic) and Gavin Ortlund (a Protestant). Horn, in arguing for the necessity of the papal magisterium to affirm biblical inspiration, had critiqued the standard Protestant interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is θεόπνευστος and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” He cited the work of John C. Poirier, whose book The Invention of the Inspired Text: Philological Windows on the Theopneustia of Scripture (T&T Clark, 2021) makes the case for rendering θεόπνευστος—a New Testament hapax legomenon derived from the Greek words θεός (God) and πνέω (to breathe)—as “live-giving” instead of the more common translation “divinely inspired” or “God-breathed.”

When I mentioned Poirier’s argument in my class, I described his view of Scripture as Barthian (after the 20th-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth). However, after I posted my class online, Poirier himself saw the lesson and contacted me directly, objecting to my characterization. He graciously offered to send me a copy of his book, and in return I agreed to write a review of it.

Having finally had an opportunity to read his book for myself, I can say that Poirier is definitely not a Barthian. Although there is some overlap in their views (both Barth and Poirier would deny inerrancy), Poirier would not agree with Barth that the Bible becomes the word of God via a personal encounter of faith. Rather, Poirier believes that the Bible contains the word of God, specifically in its prophetic utterances and in the “kerygmatic center” of the apostolic teaching (7, 154). If anything, it would be more accurate to describe Poirier’s view as Barrian—after the 20th-century biblical scholar James Barr, whom Poirier cites favorably (160–161). On this view, the Bible is a fallible record of human encounters with divinely inspired revelation, but it is not identical with that revelation itself.

Most of Poirier’s book is devoted to neutralizing the main weapon in the inspirationist’s arsenal: 2 Timothy 3:16. Against the consensus view that has held sway since at least the time of Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century AD, Poirier defends a vivificationist reading of this verse: the author of 2 Timothy (which Poirier takes to be pseudonymous) treats Scripture as “life-giving” because it makes us wise unto salvation, is profitable, and equips us for every good work. The focus is thus on the effect of Scripture rather than on its source. This is part of Poirier’s larger goal of overturning the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration, which he denies is taught anywhere in Scripture.

Poirier is to some extent resurrecting the argument of 19th-century German scholar Hermann Cremer, whom Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield critiqued in his essay “God-Inspired Scripture” (The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, rev. ed. [P&R, 2023]). Cremer had advocated for an active sense of θεόπνευστος in 2 Tim. 3:16 (“God-inspiring”) rather than a passive sense (“God-inspired”), but Warfield’s philological analysis of the term’s use outside of Scripture seemingly settled the debate in favor of the passive sense—that is, until now. Unlike Cremer, Poirier finds no reason to think that θεόπνευστος transitioned from an originally passive sense into an active sense (11). Rather, he claims that it originally and universally meant “life-giving,” only later taking on the meaning “divinely inspired” due to Origen’s influence.

Poirier reassesses all of the pre-Origen texts in Warfield’s philological survey of θεόπνευστος, as well as those texts using the alternate form θεόπνους. In each case, Poirier attempts to show that a vivificationist reading fits the context better, and that an inspirationist reading leads to interpretive difficulties. Poirier also briefly treats other biblical passages purported to teach divine inspiration—notably 2 Peter 1:21 and John 10:35—arguing that these verses respectively affirm only the inspiration of Scripture’s prophecies and its legal inviolability, not its total factual integrity (109–113). He concludes by rejecting evangelicalism’s insistence on Scripture’s total truthfulness on the one hand, and also postconservatism’s attempted redefinition of truth itself on the other—advocating instead for a return to what he sees as the original apostolic focus on the basic gospel message.

Poirier’s work demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the primary and secondary sources, and it is quite evident that his arguments were refined over the course of several years (as attested in his preface). Moreover, for the most part he strives to represent his opponents charitably. More careless authors have conflated the evangelical doctrine of inspiration with naive theories of dictation and wooden literalism, but Poirier takes pains to engage with a range of evangelical views fairly and accurately, despite his profound disagreements with them.

That said, I see some significant methodological problems in his argument. One is his failure to take into account contemporary Jewish and postapostolic Christian views of Scripture. Such views align closely with plenary verbal inspiration. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus writes concerning the Hebrew canon, “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine” (Against Apion 1.8). Likewise, Clement, bishop of Rome in the late first century, writes, “Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit” (1 Clement 45.2). For Poirier’s argument to succeed, he would need to explain how the New Testament authors could hold a view of Scripture so contrary to that of their Jewish and Christian contemporaries.

Another methodological problem is that his argument rests entirely on a philological (word usage) study of θεόπνευστος, to the near total exclusion of etymology (word origin). He writes:

We should, of course, welcome the attempt to get in touch with the etymological profile of θεόπνευστος. But etymology does not provide game-ending moves—while it often provides helpful indicators of what a term likely means, the real clues to a word’s meaning are revealed by philology. (8)

This skepticism toward etymology again echoes James Barr (The Semantics of Biblical Language [Wipf & Stock, 2004], chap. 6). Now I grant that etymology will not necessarily give us “game-ending moves,” but it would be equally mistaken to ignore it altogether. A more fruitful approach would have been to study the interface of the etymology and philology of θεόπνευστος. Such a study would reveal the close causal link between God’s Spirit/breath and vivification, especially in the context of the Old Testament (Gen. 2:7; Job 32:8; Ps. 33:6; Ezek. 37:5–6). But it would also reveal a close causal link between God’s Spirit/breath and prophetic inspiration (2 Sam. 23:2; Isa. 59:21), a link that is also present in pagan Greek sources. For example, in his poem Theogony, Hesiod writes of how the Muses “breathed [ἐνέπνευσαν] into me a divine voice [αὐδὴν θέσπιν] to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime” (31–32). Such etymological connections would, I believe, more effectively account for the semantic range of θεόπνευστος than Poirier’s narrower philological focus.

Bearing in mind the causal links between divine breath, vivification, and prophecy, we may now examine the strength of Poirier’s readings of the pre-Origen texts mentioning θεόπνευστος. It would be impossible to thoroughly evaluate every single text in the space of a single review, but the following chart of the more salient examples should be sufficient to show that, contrary to Poirier’s claims, an inspirationist reading is equally if not more plausible than a vivificationist reading in most cases:

It would be instructive to focus in more detail on one of the above examples: Pseudo-Plutarch’s Placita Philosophorum 5.2. I select this text because it may possibly be the oldest known occurrence of the word θεόπνευστος—especially if it contains an authentic quotation from the early 3rd-century BC Greek physician Herophilus—and because it illustrates some of the more significant problems with Poirier’s vivificationist approach.

Pseudo-Plutarch’s text is a doxographical compilation of the views of earlier Greek philosophers on various subjects. Book 5 mentions Herophilus with regard to his threefold dream classification: θεόπνευστος, φυσικός (natural), and συγκραματικός (mixed). The brief treatment of each type of dream has provoked considerable confusion among commentators, but the majority view is that the first category refers to dreams that originate in divine revelation.

Poirier, on the other hand, believes that it makes better sense to understand theopneustic dreams as “life-giving” in the sense of diagnostic—that is, Herophilus was operating under the widespread ancient Greek belief that dreams are a window into the functions of the body, and that dreams can reflect underlying bodily disorders (such as an imbalance of the humors), thereby providing insight into how to treat such disorders. Poirier thinks that this reading is supported by two factors: first, that it is not at all clear how the third category of “mixed” dreams—which include the example of erotic dreams evidently leading to nocturnal emissions—could be partly divinely inspired (51); and second, that Herophilus describes theopneustic dreams as occurring “by necessity” (κατ’ ἀνάγκην), which he takes to mean “according to [the body’s] need” (54).

Poirier faults Warfield for his handling of this text, which allegedly fails to take into account the third dream category altogether: “As far as I know, Warfield is the only commentator who simply ignores Herophilus’s third category of dream” (51). However, Poirier has misread Warfield here. Warfield does in fact mention the third category of dream in a footnote: “In the common text the passage goes on to tell us of the dreams of mixed nature, i.e., presumably partly divine and partly human in origin. But the idea itself seems incongruous and the description does not very well fit the category…” (Warfield, 242 n. 74). Warfield recognizes the awkwardness of describing erotic dreams as partly divinely inspired, but Laios et al. take Herophilus’s “mixed” dreams to refer to the convergence of the desires and the “idols” (images, emotions, etc.) of the soul (“Dreams in Ancient Greek Medicine,” Psychiatriki 27.3 [2016], 217–18). Another approach may be to take “mixed” dreams to be a combination not of the first two categories of dreams, but rather of psychological and physiological (αὐτομάτου) causes. Poirier thinks such readings would be problematic because they leave Herophilus without any category of diagnostic dream, which was ubiquitous among other ancient Greek physicians (56). And yet Laios et al. take Herophilus to be “a pioneer of his time” for precisely this reason.

Contrary to Poirier, the inspirationist reading of Herophilus’s theopneustic dreams also makes better sense of why they are said to occur “by necessity.” The second and third categories arise from within the soul itself, and are therefore to some extent under the dreamer’s control (they could be affected, for example, by a change of habits). On the other hand, dreams arising from divine revelation are not under the dreamer’s control and cannot be avoided—similar to the distinction between endogenous and exogenous dreams proposed by P.H. Schrijvers, whom Poirier critiques (54–55). But perhaps most problematic with Poirier’s reading of Herophilus is, again, his total disregard of the etymology of θεόπνευστος: if theopneustic dreams are merely diagnostic, then in what sense are they divine at all?

Having addressed Poirier’s philological argument, I now turn to some of the problems I see with his doctrine of Scripture. For one, Poirier denies that the Bible ever claims to be the Word of God, and believes that those passages that identify Scripture with the voice of God are limited to prophetic utterances. However, this is not the case. A clear counterexample would be Matthew 19:4–5, when Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ question about divorce by quoting from Genesis 2:24: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” What is striking about this quotation is that it comes from a historical narrative (not a prophecy) in which the narrator is the speaker, and yet it can still be attributed to God.

Further, Poirier’s more restricted definition of divine speech in Scripture poses theological problems. According to his argument, many of the prophetic utterances attributed to God in the New Testament come from texts that modern critical scholars take to be pseudonymous—especially the Psalms, which are commonly denied to be from the hand of David (see Acts 4:25 [Ps. 2:1]; Acts 13:35 [Ps. 16:10]; etc.). Now if Poirier accepts the New Testament claims of the divine inspiration of these texts while also accepting the critical consensus on their authorship, then he would need to explain how the God of truth could inspire false claims of authorship. If, on the other hand, he denies their divine inspiration, then he finds himself at odds with the apostles themselves, who taught that it was “of first importance” that Christ’s death and resurrection should be “in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4). It is difficult to see why Paul would ascribe such importance to Christ’s work fulfilling merely human texts.

Another theological problem with limiting the authority of Scripture to its “kerygmatic center” is that, without plenary verbal inspiration, it is no longer possible to define precisely what that center is. For example, would Poirier consider the Virgin Birth of Christ to be part of that center? If he accepts the conclusions of modern critical scholarship, then the only New Testament sources that explicitly mention Jesus’ birth (Matthew and Luke) are late and unreliable. Would Poirier be willing to compromise on a doctrine that was historically so central to the church’s teaching that it was included in all of its earliest creeds?

For all of these reasons, I believe that Poirier’s overall argument creates more problems than it solves. His engagement with the breadth of scholarly literature is admirable, but his theological commitments force him into some highly tenuous interpretations and conclusions. I would invite the reader to compare Poirier’s readings of θεόπνευστος with those of Warfield and form his/her own judgment. For my part, I do not expect the consensus on 2 Timothy 3:16’s witness to Scripture’s divine inspiration to change any time soon.