Why I Don't Believe in the Verbal Inspiration of Scripture

Part One of Addressing My Differences with the Church of God Declaration of Faith

This post is the first in a series exploring the 14 points of the Church of God’s Declaration of Faith—and where I’ve come to diverge from them. These reflections are not a rejection of my spiritual heritage but an honest attempt to speak the truth in love.

I still attend a Church of God congregation because, in many ways, it aligns with my spirituality, my worship preferences, and my core values about faith and practice. But over the years, many have asked why I haven’t pursued ordination again. Others are curious about what I now believe and how it differs from the Church of God’s official teachings. This series is, in part, a response to those questions.

I believe I can continue to participate in a local church, even with these differences, so long as my local congregation allows room for me. I’m not writing to argue or persuade, but to clarify—to myself and to others—why I no longer affirm certain doctrinal positions, even as I remain within the community.

Stanley Hauerwas was once asked why he remained a Methodist despite his many criticisms of the denomination. He responded, “Because these are the people who marked me.” I feel the same. The Church of God shaped me. They are my people. What matters most to me has never been the organization—it’s been the people who carried me, believed in me, and loved me into faith.

So let’s get started. In this blog, I begin with the first article of the Declaration of Faith: “We believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible.” It’s a foundational claim—one that shapes how the Church of God understands truth, authority, and even God’s voice.

Verbal inspiration is the belief that every word of Scripture is inspired and written by God through the hands of human authors as if God himself possessed their bodies and wrote the words himself. It implies that all parts of the Bible—every word and passage—are equally and fully inspired by God, often extending to the idea that the original and even current manuscripts were entirely without error.

In short, I believe in the inspiration of Scripture and that all Scripture was inspired by God. My divergence is with the phrase "verbal inspiration." I reject the idea that it was written without error as if God possessed the writer and guided the pen, so to speak. I reject this idea for several reasons, each of which is 1) theological, 2) historical, 3) experiential, and 4) pneumatological respectively:

1. Verbal inspiration is not incarnational in the way the New Testament portrays the incarnation, and incarnationality is the hallmark of Christian faith and practice. God does not typically act as a deity who so overtakes human faculties that people are left devoid of influence over how divine revelation is expressed. This is most clearly exemplified in the person of Jesus, whom John refers to as the “Word of God” (John 1:1–14). Scripture also says he was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). And when Jesus spoke, he did not speak with an omniscient voice thundering from above, like God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but in human language and from within human limitations. He told parables, used metaphors drawn from agriculture and daily life, and even reinterpreted long-standing Scriptural interpretations: “You have heard that it was said… but I tell you…” (Matthew 5:21–48).

Even in his resurrection, those closest to him did not always recognize his presence. Mary mistook him for the gardener (John 20:14–15), Thomas refused to believe until he could touch the wounds (John 20:24–29), and the disciples on the road to Emmaus failed to recognize him until the breaking of bread (Luke 24:13–35). In other words, humanity had to grapple with the Word made flesh—and they did not always do so with clarity or without error.

On the other hand, Jesus consistently rebuked those who treated Scripture as though it were God itself and they its unerring ambassadors. He challenged their interpretations, exposed their hypocrisy, and reminded them that the Scriptures are not God; he is, and the Scriptures point not to themselves but to him (John 5:39–40).

Perhaps a better way of saying it is that when God's word was fully expressed, it was expressed in the form of a human, and humans are not concretized as the words on a page, nor are humans reducible to a series of legal statements. Humans are emotional, complex, and mysterious. Thus, any belief about Scripture that tends toward reliance on fixed, rigid interpretations, as though those interpretations are themselves God's infallible words, is suspect to me. I am much more interested in a hermeneutic (that is, a method or approach to interpreting Scripture) that leans into mystery, complexity, and the lived realities of human experience.

2. Stories—not written words—are the foundation of faith. The Judeo-Christian tradition was first a storytelling tradition. The people of Israel lived the Exodus, the exile, and the return before those stories were ever inscribed on scrolls. The earliest Christians gathered around the story of Jesus as it was told, remembered, and shared orally, long before the Gospels were written. In both cases, communities were formed not around documents but around experiences and the shared telling of those experiences. The faith was embodied, relational, and rooted in memory.

This is not a uniquely Western or biblical phenomenon. Across the globe, religious traditions have been born and sustained through story alone. Shinto, the indigenous spirituality of Japan, existed for centuries without a sacred text. Its beliefs and practices were carried in rituals, myths, and seasonal festivals. Stories about the kami—divine spirits—were preserved in memory and place, not parchment. When the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were eventually compiled in the 8th century, they reflected what had already lived in the hearts and habits of a people.

Modern thinkers, like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, have long argued that myth is more than pre-scientific explanation; it is the architecture of meaning. Myths carry truth not because every detail is historically or factually precise, but because they illuminate the contours of human existence—our fears, hopes, failures, and longings. These stories endure not because they are perfect, but because they are alive.

If faith communities have been shaped by story long before they were shaped by text, why would we assume God's primary mode of inspiration was word-perfect manuscripts? The very history of faith contradicts the assumptions of verbal inspiration. God seems to inspire communities through story, not stenographers through dictation.

3. Inspirational writing, as we have seen expressed among all humans, is more akin to what Marty Stuart told Chris Stapleton one afternoon during a writing session. When they sat down to write, instead of pulling out a laptop, Chris Stapleton pulled out a pen and paper. Marty Stuart was a little surprised and said, "That's the way I like to see it: straight from God and onto the paper." I believe more than just the Bible is inspired by God. I have experienced writings, art, architecture, and music—both sacred and so-called secular—that have drawn me close to God. I have had spiritual experiences listening to non-religious songs. Beauty in all mediums is inspired by God. That is the method of inspiration I believe caused writers to produce the Scriptures.

That is not to say the Scriptures are just common writing. I believe they were especially inspired, and I believe that the books we have been handed by the church should be held in the highest esteem. One can see how I use them in my daily spirituality and in my reflections and blogs. They are special. Mysterious. And the principal document from which the church draws all of its beliefs and practices. Oddly enough, this was the first belief the Church of God had about doctrine. The founders of the movement that became known as the Church of God rejected creeds and declared that the New Testament should be their only rule for faith and practice, "giving each other equal rights and privilege to interpret Scripture" (Church of God History)

4. Inspiration didn’t stop with Scripture. One of the quiet contradictions in the doctrine of verbal inspiration is the assumption that the Bible, in its current form, is the final Word of God. But within the Church of God, as in most Pentecostal traditions, there’s also a deep belief in ongoing, Spirit-led utterance. Prophecies are given. Tongues are interpreted. Words of knowledge are spoken. And these aren’t presented as reflections or impressions—they’re often prefaced with, “Thus saith the Lord.”

This raises a question: If we believe God is still speaking, how can we also claim that only the words of Scripture are divinely inspired? Either God continues to communicate through human language, or he does not. And if he does, then we must acknowledge that inspiration is not a frozen moment locked in ancient text, but a living and active process that continues among God’s people.

That doesn’t mean every prophecy or personal revelation should be placed on par with Scripture. But it does mean the Spirit hasn’t gone silent. The canon may be closed by the church, but God is not through speaking. A theology that clings to verbal inspiration as its foundation risks cutting off the very thing Pentecostals claim to treasure most: the ongoing voice of God.

In the end, my divergence from the doctrine of verbal inspiration doesn’t mean I reject the Bible. It means I revere it differently. I approach it not as a flawless transcript of God’s mind, but as a sacred library of human encounters with the divine—alive with mystery, story, and the breath of inspiration that still speaks. That shift has changed how I read, how I teach, and how I listen for God. And it’s from that posture that I’ll continue to reflect on the other points of the Declaration of Faith in the following weeks. Stay tuned!