Back Again
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16 NIV
God-breathed – Until the cows come home. Yes, that’s probably how long debate about this verse will continue in the religious community. It’s not that we don’t understand what Paul wrote. The vocabulary is pretty clear. It’s that we don’t know what he implied with the Greek term theópneustos, literally God-breathed. In the Tanakh the idea of God’s breath is connected to “what gives life,” and in that sense we can clearly see that Paul’s view of “scripture” is life-giving. No argument there. But the real debate is about the scope of this word. One of the reasons for this is the uniqueness of the word:
This word is used for the wisdom or dreams that come from God. In the NT it occurs only in 2 Tim. 3:16, where, along with “sacred,” it describes the OT writings that have divine authority. In the Hellenistic world the idea of inspiration is common but seldom refers to writings. In Judaism, however, God inscribes the commandments on tablets (Ex. 24:12) and inspires the prophets (Num. 24:2ff.). The law, being taught, dictated, or written directly by God, has supreme authority, but later works, being inspired by God, have a secondary authority. Philo regards all the OT authors as prophets. 2 Tim. 3:16 advances no particular theory of enthusiastic inspiration, uses no comparisons such as that of the flow of air through the flute, and offers no criteria such as the agreement of witnesses, the age of the writing, or the fulfilment of prophecies. The stress is on the work of Scripture.[1]
We might reasonably ask why Paul chose this particular term, especially since it has no LXX equivalent. Perhaps Heschel’s remark about the language of Torah offers some help:
What is the distinction between the language of Torah and human language? Human beings distinguish between form and content. There are words that add nothing to the substance of a thought but are uttered because the conventions and rules of language so dictate; their contribution is aesthetic rather than instructive. God’s ways, however, are not human ways. With God, form is nonexistent; there is only content. Every letter, every word, whether expanding or limiting a subject, is intended to teach a lesson. Each idiom instructs and clarifies. There is no form here; all is content, all is instruction. Just as heaven is loftier than earth, so the language of Torah is loftier than the language of human beings. And our rational powers are insufficient to grasp the esoterics of Torah; they cannot be handled with the tongue of logic alone.[2]
Is this what Paul tried to communicate to Timothy? Is there a “mystical” quality in the Tanakh that can’t be defined by linguistic analysis? Is that why Paul invented a new Greek word?
Topical Index: theópneustos, God-breathed, inspired, logic, 2 Timothy 3:16
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (pp. 894–895). W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, p. 56.
