INSPIRATION.
Jewish Doctrine (§1).
Early Christian Doctrine (§ 2).
The Scholastic Period (§ 3).
The Reformation (§ 4).
Post-Reformation Development (§ 5).
Modern Development (§ 6).
The Bible and Inspiration (§ 7).
Nature and Method of Inspiration (§ 8).
The Theory of Plenary Inspiration (§ 9).
The Theory of Partial Inspiration (§ 10).
Criteria of Inspiration (§ 11).
Modern Tendencies and Development (§ 12).
In theological language, inspiration signifies the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the writers of the Bible, by which the Bible becomes the expression of the will of God binding upon us, or the Word of God. The term originated from the Vulgate version of II Tim. iii. 16, Omnis scriptura divinitus inspirata. The Greek word theopneustos — of which it is at least doubtful whether divinitus inspirata is an accurate translation — belongs only to Hellenistic and Christian Greek, and may have been coined by Paul. Other post-classical uses of it show that it signifies " filled with the Spirit of God " or " breathing out the Spirit of God," from which it follows that the Scripture so designated has come into being under the operation of the Spirit. The preference of the Greek commentators for the meaning expressed by divinitus inspirata would have less importance if it were not explicable by the prevalent view, for which the corresponding term was thought to be found in II Tim. iii. 16, which was more or less an inheritance from Alexandrian Judaism or from paganism.
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Inscriptions Inspiration
The church doctrine — or rather the oldest views held in the Church, since it is inaccurate to speak
of any distinct church doctrine on the i. Jewish point, either before or since the Refor- Doctrine. mation, outside of the single statement
that the Scripture is inspired, without saying how it is inspired — is much closer to the Alexandrian or pagan view than to that of Jewish theology. Both Talmudic and Alexandrian Judaism agreed in attributing unique authority to the Old Testament. The Talmud claims an immediate divine origin for the " Law," asserting that God wrote it with his own hand, or dictated it to Moses as his amanuensis. A secondary revelation is contained in the " Prophets " (from Joshua on, including Psalms, Canticles, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ezra), as Kabbalah, or tradition as distinguished from the Law. In the case of the prophets, their personality is not so absorbed by the Spirit of God as to render them mere unconscious organs. The medieval Jewish theologians were the first to attribute a special kind of inspiration to the Hagiographa, as written by the spirit of holiness, while the prophetical books were written by the spirit of prophecy. Jewish antiquity knows nothing of such a distinction; and Matt. xxii. 43 shows that the origin of these books too was referred to the Spirit of God. That the personality of the authors was still more prominent in them than in the prophets may be inferred from their place in the canon, as well as from various expressions which put them, in relation to the Law, in the lowest place. Alexandrian Judaism took a different view. It is true that Josephus maintains that the Spirit was absent from the second Temple, and designates the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus as the end of canonical authorship; but he, as well as Philo and the author of Wisdom (vii. 27), believes none the less in a continuance and diffusion of the prophetic gift. Upon this theory rest the legend of the origin of the Septuagint and the acceptance of the Apocrypha. Thus, while apparently broader and freer than Talmudic Judaism, the Alexandrian school represents a doctrine of inspiration which is really much more strict. All the Old-Testament writers are prophets; but with the prophetic illumination human consciousness ceases. The prophet is merely an organ of God, who speaks through him; he knows nothing of what he is doing, and has no will of his own. He is in a state of ecstasy, even when he writes down what he has been commissioned to reveal. This condition Philo believes that he can describe from his own experience. There is an ecstasy mentioned in the Bible, but it is not this kind of ecstasy, nor is it the normal vehicle of inspiration, but something extraordinary; and the communication of the message to others does not take place in this state, with the possible exception of an involuntary prophecy like that of Balaam [but cf. II Kings iii. 15-19, and see Ecstasy]. The Biblical conception of ecstasy is that of a state in which supernatural revelations are imparted to men who, in their natural state, are incapable of perceiving them — either by divinely exhibited symbols, as in Acts x. 10; Jer. i. 11, 13, or by the communication of supernatural realities and images of future
events, as in Num. xxiv. 3, 4, xxii. 31; II Kings vi. 17; cf. II Cor. xii. 1 sqq.; Rev. i. 10. In this state the percipient is either " in the Spirit," i.e., the limitations of his ordinary sensuous perceptions fall away altogether, or they are momentarily removed without the cessation of sensuous perception, and supernatural appearances present themselves in conjunction with those of ordinary life, as in Luke i. 11. In no case does the state seem to be one of which no memory is afterward preserved; the ecstasy is not (according to Augustine on Ps. lxvii.) a " mental alienation," but a " mental separation from physical sensation so that whatever is revealed is revealed to the spirit." The theory of Philo, or the Hellenistic theory, thus originated neither in the Old Testament nor in strictly Jewish theology outside of it, but much more directly in paganism. Philo's conception can not be put down wholly to the account of his Platonizing tendency, but contains other elements, possibly borrowed from Oriental religions. Still, it is in the main the general Greek conception of enthousiasmos, of the mania of the manteis (" prophet " or " diviner "), akin to the Platonic view of the source of artistic production and of prophecy.
The same pagan conception is encountered once more in the first definite expressions from Christian writers as to the nature and method 2. Early of inspiration. In the Apostolic Christian Fathers is found merely a simple ex- Doctrine, pression of the fact of inspiration in the way in which they cite the Old Testament. But the second-century apologists emphasize the divine origin of the knowledge contained in Holy Scripture, and unquestionably teach an inspiration which is not merely mechanical, but mantic. In order to understand this, it must be remembered that these men, brought up in paganism, got at the same time their first impression of Christian truth and of the divine origin of the primary revelation and so of the Scriptures. The more Christianity claimed to be not the result of a logical process of thought, but a revelation made under the operation of the Spirit of God, the easier it was for them to apply to it the Greek conception of the origin of such knowledge; and the process was further facilitated by the respect paid to the Sibylline prophecies (see Sibylline Books). If this last fact be taken in connection with the prominent place which prophecy holds in Scripture, the importance which the apologists attached to prophecy can be understood, and that it was natural for them to refer all ancient prophecy to the working of the Spirit of God. There was no need of an acquaintance with Philo (of whom Justin speaks with great respect) to lead to this view, which finally found its most definite representation in Montanism. The opposition of the Church to Montanism was responsible for the fact that the doctrine of ecstasy as the form of inspiration found no continued recognition in the Church. Clement of Alexandria placed ecstasy among the marks of false prophets, and, from Origen on, the doctors of the Church, rejected the conception of prophecy which originated in paganism. In direct opposition to Montanism, the unconscious action of the
Inspiration