Yeah, inspiration is a non-negotiable even though we may disagree on what that means and what is entailed by it.
When I spoke of nuance, it was specifically about the Bible being the "word of God" as there is room within the faith to hold that the "word of God" is the 2nd person of the Trinity, and that the Bible is a means by which He takes expression in human language. Which IMO has dramatic implications on how we understand inspiration(and by extension inerrancy).
This I definitely understand, and appreciate. As I've seen my share of people who reduce the expression "word of God" as always meaning "the Bible", in which case we have some serious problems--for one, Jesus is the Divine Word mentioned multiple times in the Johanine literature. And Jesus is certainly not the Bible; nor is the Bible Jesus. I specifically recall one infamous pastor with an online presence years ago holding up his King James Version of the Bible, and on the basis of John 1:1, proclaimed that the Bible is, itself, God. That is, obviously, contemptable idolatry and blatant heresy.
As a Lutheran the expression "word of God" is used in many ways; because we believe the Bible itself uses this expression (and similar expressions) in different ways. Jesus is, Himself, the Uncreated, Eternal, and Divine Logos--the Word--and so He is Himself in His Divine Person the very Word of God. And this means something incredibly different than all other uses of "word of God" (though, arguably, there is always a connection). So, for example, God's commandments are called His word, so that the Torah is the "word of God" in the sense that God literally gave His instruction to Israel, and so when the Psalmist says "Your word is a lamp unto my feet" he is speaking of Torah quite specifically. We also have the myriad examples of the Prophets who speak the "word of YHWH" as in expressions such as "the word of YHWH came to me/to so-and-so" this is the prophetic word, whereby the prophet proclaims that which God gives him to proclaim. St. Paul uses "word of God" and "word of Christ" or just "the word" very often to specifically mean the Gospel and its proclamation. For example in Romans 10:17 "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ" (textual variants read "word of God"), and this is very obvious in context to be a reference to the preaching and proclamation of the Gospel.
So when reference is made to Scripture as "the word of God", it is a kind of synthesis of all these ideas. The Bible is, quite literally, comprised of the Old Testament (Law and Prophets [and Writings]), and New Testament which very clearly speaks of and presents the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ*. Though that there is, to use the oft-Lutheran way of speaking, Law and Gospel--the words/word of God.
So we speak of the Bible as the word of God because
1) Its constituent parts are attributed to God, using the Law-Gospel dialectic; and also using a literary analysis we see Torah, the words of the Prophets, the inspired Writings of history and poetry and wisdom literature, as well as the Gospel narratives, the Epistles, etc--of which many are categorically ascribed to God (e.g. Torah, the Prophetic word, the Gospel proclamation). And thus the whole can rightly be called "the word of God".
2) The divine authority and inspiration of Scripture on the whole; whereby we confess that the whole of Scripture, though written by ordinary men, nevertheless were given by the grace, gift, and power of the Holy Spirit to be so moved to write what God intended them to write--though we need not entertain speculative imagination about some kind of "divine dictation", merely that the agency of the Spirit moved through the agency of men; so that both God and man wrote Scripture in concert, even if we permit this to be described as perhaps in an inscrutable way. Which is just me trying to cover all my bases: We do not need to entertain divine dictation, we do not need to eliminate the role of real human agency in the writing of the books of the Bible, God is fully able to work through the limitations of human thought and language to say what needs to be said, and we do not need to ever doubt that what is written is truly, and most assuredly, there by God's divine providence because of the grace and work of the Spirit.
3) The power and work of the Spirit through and upon Scripture is manifest in the throughlines of redemptive history. The whole of the Bible contains a profound metatext, or metanarrative, with a clear Christ-centered focus. All the pathways and streams of Scripture are moving toward, flowing toward, the Person and work of Jesus Christ. In this way Scripture is always Christ-centered, and indeed, Christ-bearing. The term I have often favored is to speak of Scripture as "the Christ-bearing text", this is not merely in the ways we see Scripture "hyper-linked" together as different authors borrow and interact with one another; but in a divinely orchestrated metanarrative that emerges as we begin to see the picture brought into focus: Jesus. It's about Jesus. It was always about Jesus. But even more than that, I think we can rightly say that Jesus is right there in the text, not merely in reference, but He is Personally present in Scripture in profound ways. When I experience Scripture, I do not merely encounter reference to Christ--I meet
Jesus. And this powerful, I'd argue, sacramental encounter with Christ in Scripture is no less profound than the personal encounter of Christ in His Holy Eucharist, or the encounter with Christ in Holy Baptism, or the encounter with Christ in Holy Absolution. So when the Lutheran speaks of "Word and Sacrament", there is a panoply of meaning being said in such a short number of words.
4) And this is more of an addendum to the above, there is here in this sense a meaningful connection between Jesus as The Word of God, and Scripture as the word of God--not a conflation or confusion (that's idolatry); but that Scripture presents a sacramental encounter with the Divine Word Himself. So that the word about The Word, actually brings us face-to-face with The Word Himself.
I think all of these things, here, should convey: We should recognize the myriad ways the expression "word of God" can and does get used; without confusing them, especially not confusing the Person of the Divine Word, and the written word which is about Him (to borrow an old wisdom saying from the far east, don't confuse the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself). And yet, Scripture is powerful, it is alive, it's--well--the word of God.
-CryptoLutheran
*Disclaimer: This is not to suggest that the Gospel can't be found in the Old Testament; or that the New Testament doesn't contain commandments (Law) nor prophetic declarations; Law and Gospel is found from Genesis to Revelation.
