“…The earlier theology almost completely allowed revelation to coincide with divine inspiration, the gift of Scripture. It only incidentally referred to revelation and conceived of it much to narrowly. It seem as if there was nothing behind Scripture. As a result Scripture came to stand in complete detachment and isolation and made it seem as if it had suddenly dropped out of heaven. The mighty conception of revelation as a history that began at the fall and ends only in the perousia was – at least to scientific theology – almost totally foreign. This view is untenable. After all, in by far the majority of cases, revelation is antecedent to divine inspiration and often separated from it for a long time. The revelation of God to the patriarchs, in the history of Israel, in the person of Christ was sometimes not described till centuries and years later, and also the prophets and apostles frequently recorded their revelations only after their reception (e.g. Jer. 25:13; 30:1; 36:2ff.). In this connection not everything was recorded that, when it came, did in fact belong to the circle of revelation (John 20:30; 21:25). In addition there were many persons, such as Elijah, Elisha, Thomas, and Nathanael, etc. organs of revelation, who nevertheless never wrote a book that was included in the canon; others, by contrasts, received no revelations and performed no miracles but did record them in writing, as for example the writers of the many historical books. Revelation further took place in different forms (dreams, visions, etc.) and was intended to make known something that was hidden; [divine inspiration] was always an interior working of God’s Spirit in and upon the [human] consciousness and served to guarantee the content of Scripture.
Modern theology therefore rightly made a distinction between divine revelation and scripture. But this theology often fell into the opposite extreme. It so completely detached revelation from Scripture that it became no more than an accidental appendix, an arbitrary addition, a human record of revelation, which might perhaps still be useful but was in any case not necessary. This theme was acclaimed in all sorts of variations: “Not the letter but the Spirit”; “not Scripture but the person of Christ”; “not the word but the fact is the fundamental principle of Scripture.” And Lessing managed to produce the familiar petition: “O Luther, you great and holy man! You have delivered us from the yoke of the pope but who will deliver us from the yoke of the letter, the paper pope?” This view is no less wrong but even more dangerous than the other. For in many cases revelation and divine inspiration do coincide. Far from everything that is recorded in Scripture was revealed in advance but arose in the authors’ consciousness during the wring itself, e.g. the Psalms and the Letters, etc. Those who deny divine inspiration and despise Scripture will also in large part lose the revelation; will have left nothing but human writings. In addition the revelation, even where in fact or word it preceded its recording, is known to us solely from Holy Scripture. We literally know nothing of the revelation of God in the time of Israel and in Christ except from Holy Scripture. There is no other primary principle. With the fall of Holy Scripture, therefore, all the revelation falls as well, as does the person of Christ. Precisely becaue revelation is history there is no way to learn something about it other than the ordinary way that applies to all of history and that is human attestation. To our mind attestation decides about the reality of a fact. We have no fellowship with Christ except through fellowship in the word of the apostles (John 17:20,21; 1 John 1:3). For us, the church of all the ages, revelation exists only in the form of Holy Scripture. Finally, divine inspiration, as will be evident later, is an attribute of the Scriptures, a unique and distinct activity of God in connection with the production of Scripture and therefore also itself to be acknowledged and honored to that extent as an act of revelation. Hence contempt for and the rejection of Scripture is not a harmless act with regard to human testimonies concerning revelation but denial of a special revelational act of God.
Hence both schools are one-sided, the one that fails to do justice to revelation for the sake of Scripture as well as the one that fails to do justice to Scripture for the sake of revelation. In the former, divine revelation, in the latter, divine inspiration does not come into its own. In the one, people have Scripture without scriptures; in the other, scriptures without Scripture. In the former there is a neglect of history; in the other contempt for the Word. The former lapses into orthodox intellectualism; the latter is in danger of Anabaptistic spiritualism. The right view is one in which Scripture is neither equated with revelation nor detached from it and place outside of it. Divine inspiration is an element in revelation, a last act in which the revelation of God in Christ is concluded for this dispensation. Hence it is in that sense the end, the crown, the making permanent, and the publication of revelation, the means by which immediate revelation is made mediate and recounted in books.”
~ Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics 1:381-382
The Strasbourg Inn 