Upham, Hodge, Warfield, and Sewell on Inerrancy. Or, “Thoughts on the Holy Gospels” (part four).

For this long-overdue contribution to our series on Francis Upham’s “Thoughts on the Holy Gospels,” we jump ahead to chapter eight, which speaks to the “Inspiration of the Gospels.”¹ What most intrigued me about this chapter was his alignment with others who were writing on Inspiration—by which they also meant inerrancy—in this time frame. Upham (1817-1895), who for some amount of time taught at Rutger’s Female College in New York, published his book in 1881. That was the same year during which A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield of Princeton Seminary in New Jersey published their article on “Inspiration.”² Also of interest is William Sewell, who was at Oxford for a season, and who published a book entitled “A Letter on the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, Addressed to a Student,” in 1861.³ Upham includes an extended quote from Sewell. Of course, this was all also shortly before Spurgeon battled over the downgrade of churches in England, whose “first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures.”⁴

Rather than following the argument which Upham develops, I’m going to simply offer a variety of quotes from Hodge and Warfield, then Upham, and then Sewell. Again, my interest is in showing that Upham—who originally drew my attention due to his affirmation of an early publication of Matthew—was aligned with the giants who were taking a stand for the inspiration (and inerrancy) of Scripture.

Let’s start with a quote from Hodge and Warfield:

The mere fact of Inspiration … or the superintendence by God of the writers in the entire process of their writing, which accounts for nothing whatever but the absolute infallibility of the record in which the revelation, once generated, appears in the original autograph. It will be observed that we intentionally avoid applying to this inspiration the predicate “influence.” It summoned, on occasion, a great variety of influences, but its essence was superintendence. This superintendence attended the entire process of the genesis of Scripture, and particularly the process of the final composition of the record.⁵

The historical faith of the Church has always been that all the affirmations of Scripture of all kinds, whether of spiritual doctrine or duty, or of physical or historical fact, or of psychological or philosophical principle, are without any error, when the ipsissima verba of the original autographs are ascertained and interpreted in their natural and intended sense. There is a vast difference between exactness of statement, which includes an exhaustive rendering of details, an absolute literalness, which the Scriptures never profess, and accuracy, on the other hand, which secures a correct statement of facts or principles intended to be affirmed. It is this accuracy and this alone, as distinct from exactness, which the Church doctrine maintains of every affirmation in the original text of Scripture without exception. Every statement accurately corresponds to truth just as far forth as affirmed.⁶

This is indeed refreshing to revisit, given my recent reading of Michael Licona’s Jesus, Contradicted, which argues that the Gospels conform to contemporary standards in writing biographies, suggesting that the Gospels include artistic embellishments, while also declaring that the Gospels reflect human imperfections.⁷ Therefore, he claims that a more flexible inerrancy is warranted, not bound by the Chicago Statement’s affirmations and denials, and “which does not concern itself over whether there were errors in details in the original manuscript.⁸

With that, let us turn to Upham’s view of Inerrancy, with respect to the Gospels.

For accuracy the freely-given testimony of the Evangelists comes into a class by itself. In the Gospels there are no contradictions. There are satisfactory explanations of almost all their seeming differences, and of the four or five that alone remain, explanations have been given that are, at least, quite possible. To ask more than this, as to such ancient and minute documents, of those who hold to the plenary inspiration of the Gospels, is the mere fanaticism of unbelief.⁹

Upham then affirmatively provides an extended quote from William Sewell. Here is but a brief excerpt:

A very minute investigation of the Greek of the New Testament … has only served to deepen the convictions that the holy Scriptures are indeed in very truth the word of God, inspired by his Holy Spirit; that they are in the original minutely, scrupulously, marvelously exact in every word, syllable, and letter. … Deeply and awfully convinced I am that the Scriptures are not merely the work of good, holy, inspired men, but that they are really the voice of God, that we must approach them, therefore, with the confidence, the reverence, the unshaken belief in their correctness, truthfulness, depth, importance, and infinite wisdom, due to words which issue from the mouth of God himself.¹⁰

Unfortunately, Upham does not identify the source of the quote from Sewell. However, elsewhere Sewell has written a book-length letter to a student defending the inspiration of Scripture. Here is one foundational statement:

Almighty God has been pleased to guarantee to us, by the testimony and authority of His witnesses, the inspiration, and therefore truth, of His Holy Word, as it was written and delivered. But He has not guaranteed either the accuracy of copyists, or the correctness of translators, or the soundness of our own philological criticism, or the truth of our own human interpretations and human constructions of Holy Writ.¹¹

How I do wish that more evangelical scholars would revisit these confident claims from around 150 years ago!

1. Francis W. Upham, Thoughts on the Holy Gospels: How They Came to Be in Manner and Form as They Are (New York, NY: Phillips & Hunt, 1881). ↩︎
2. Archibald A. Hodge and Benjamin B. Warfield, “Inspiration,” The Presbyterian Review 6 (April 1881). ↩︎
3. William Sewell, A Letter on the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, Addressed to a Student (J. H. and Jas. Parker, 1861). ↩︎
4. Robert Shindler, “The Down Grade: Second Article,” ed. Charles H. Spurgeon, The Sword and the Trowel, April 1887, 166–72. ↩︎
5. Hodge and Warfield, “Inspiration,” 225–26. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 238. ↩︎
7. Michael R. Licona, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently (Grand Rapids, MI: HarperCollins Christian Publishing, 2024), 84. “Since we observe the presence of human imperfections in Scripture, do you think their presence disqualifies Scripture as being divinely inspired?” Ibid., 168. ↩︎
8. Licona, Jesus, Contradicted, 206. ↩︎
9. Upham, Thoughts on the Holy Gospels, 143. ↩︎
10. Ibid., 145. Unfortunately, Upham does not identify the source of the quote from William Sewell. ↩︎
11. Sewell, A Letter on the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, 50. ↩︎

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