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Many evangelicals place very strong emphasis on the word “divine inspiration.” Why? The apostle Paul writes, “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching….” Around that single word a whole theology of the Bible’s absolute inerrancy is often built. But the question arises: what exactly does “God-breathed” mean? To what extent? Fifty percent? One hundred percent? How much of the human author’s will was preserved in the writing? And if God breathed into a person only one-thousandth of a percent and the rest the human wrote from his own ideas — is that acceptable? Above all: how did Jesus and Paul themselves relate to Scripture?

The problem is not the word “divine inspiration” itself. The problem is that later Christianity turned one word into an enormous system of views that the New Testament itself does not develop in detail.

First, it is important to understand: when Paul wrote these words, the New Testament did not yet exist as a single book. Most likely by “Scripture” he meant the Jewish Scriptures — what we call the Old Testament.

Second, the Greek word theopneustos (“God-breathed” or “divinely inspired”) occurs in the New Testament only once. That’s striking. If the idea of the text’s absolute infallibility were central to Christianity, we would expect numerous explanations. For example, Jesus repeatedly used the word “Father” of God; He regarded it as important, and so we find hundreds of instances of that word in the Gospels. But the term “divine inspiration” appears only once. Therefore we don’t really know what “God-breathed” precisely means, how it operates, whether it extends to every historical detail, whether it implies complete inerrancy. The New Testament does not develop any of this.

Moreover, Paul treats Scripture far more freely than many modern fundamentalists do. He allegorizes Old Testament stories, reinterprets the Law, calls the Law “a tutor to bring us to Christ.” He even says “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”: how could God give something that can “kill” the reader? Paul clearly sees Scripture not as an ultimate end but as a way to something greater.

Jesus’ attitude is even more telling. He constantly quotes Scripture and respects it. Yet at the same time He places his own spiritual authority above the religious tradition of the text. We read his famous formula, “You have heard that it was said to those of old… but I say to you….” That is an extremely strong claim. Jesus did not abolish Scripture entirely, but He showed that spiritual reality goes deeper than the letter.

What else did Jesus do? He challenged literal religious interpretations and placed the person above Sabbath rules. He said some things were permitted by Moses “because of your hardness of heart.” It is also important what Jesus does not say. Nowhere does He assert: “The main thing is to believe in the absolute inerrancy of the text.” The center of his teaching was love, faith, mercy — the inner condition of a person: the kingdom of God and a living relationship with God. Even in John’s Gospel it says, “The Word became flesh,” not “The Word became a book.”

So building all of Christianity on the one word “divine inspiration” is risky. In fact, it is unreasonable—especially since the New Testament itself does not make this the center of theology.

Conservative Christians and evangelicals usually respond like this: if you defend the text, you thereby protect the spiritual reality to which the text points. For them there is a chain: God — revelation — Scripture — truth — salvation. If one link is broken, it seems the whole chain will collapse. Thus defending the text is perceived as defending the faith itself. Psychologically this is understandable. An absolute text provides stability, a sense of security, objectivity, protection from arbitrariness and chaos — especially in the modern world where everything seems relative. Everything is documented and supposedly reliable.

But a serious problem arises here. The means begins to replace the end. In the biblical tradition Scripture usually points beyond itself. It is a testimony, a window, a signpost. And a signpost is not the road itself. Jesus says, “Search the Scriptures… and yet you will not come to me to have life.” That is: one can study the sacred text and at the same time not come to the spiritual reality the text points toward.

The biggest problem is that defending the text can sometimes become a substitute for the living spiritual process. A living God means inner transformation, freedom, risk, spiritual growth, the need for discernment.

History itself shows how easily a text can be turned into a system of control and certainty. History also shows another paradox: the religious people who most zealously defended Scripture in Jesus’ time eventually came into conflict with the One to whom Scripture pointed. This is not an argument against Scripture; it is an argument against absolutizing the text.

At this point conservatives and evangelicals raise another very serious question: if everything is based on spiritual experience, and experience cannot be fully fixed or documented, what will keep faith from dissolving into chaos? Won’t everyone create “their own Jesus”?

This fear cannot be dismissed. History does show examples where subjective spirituality became chaotic. But the problem is that we are often offered only two extremes: an absolutely inerrant text or total subjective chaos. Between those extremes there is a vast territory.

Christians often ask themselves: “Did God create the Bible or not?” As if only two options are possible: God literally dictated every line, or the Bible is wholly human and spiritually worthless. But the Bible itself is much more complex and alive. It is more accurate to say: the Bible is the result of an encounter between God and humans in history. It contains spiritual experience, a search for God, revelation, prayer, struggle, human language and culture. The Bible is not a magical object that fell from heaven; it is the story of real interaction between God and humanity.

At the center of Christianity is not a book but Jesus. And Jesus, according to Christian belief, is fully united with God yet fully participates in human reality. Christianity does not fear the idea of the union of the divine and the human. So why are many afraid to allow that Scripture might also contain both divine action and an imperfect human element in varying proportions? Maybe people are afraid of losing absolute certainty. But living faith is almost never built only on absolute intellectual guarantees. It is built on trust, spiritual experience, inner growth and a journey.

The most important things in human life cannot be fully reduced to a system: love, conscience, beauty, trust, spiritual experience. They can be described, guided, tested, but not fully reduced to a mechanical formula. The same goes for Christianity. We have the Bible, which says “love your neighbor”: did that help us? Can you really distort that commandment beyond recognition? Aren’t these simple truths capable of preserving themselves in human memory, passing from heart to heart, from generation to generation? They can. Truth exists on its own and does not always need to be documented and analyzed. For example, we do not need to put the force of gravity into sacred documents for gravity to exist.

Early Christianity rested not only on texts but also on community, spiritual practice, moral fruit, lived experience, and the person of Jesus. Does Paul tell his readers in his letters to “test everything against an infallible text”? No. He says: “test the spirits”; “test everything; hold fast to what is good”; “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace….” Thus the criterion becomes not only the letter but spiritual fruit.

Furthermore, the idea that an absolute text automatically eliminates chaos is not borne out by history. People with the same Bible created thousands of denominations, justified wars, defended slavery, argued about salvation, predestination, authority, women, and violence. The text itself does not eliminate the problem of interpretation.

Take evangelicals for example. In fact, they do not live by the text alone. They live by their tradition, culture, trust in community, internal religious experience, and emotional encounters with God — it’s just often not recognized.

A more mature position might look like this: yes, people need an orientation. Scripture is important. Tradition is important. Community is important. Otherwise spirituality can indeed fall apart. But turning the text into an absolute mechanical system is also a mistake, because then living spiritual reality is replaced by control and dogmatic safety.

It is impossible to eliminate the risk of freedom entirely. If we are talking about a living God and living people, freedom will always be part of the path. And without freedom there can be neither love, nor true faith, nor spiritual growth. And therefore without freedom there is no salvation.