INSPIRATION

(a) RELIGIOUS SENSE.

Inspiration, in the religious sense of the word, denotes a psychological fact: the more or less complete takeover of the human soul by the Spirit of God.

In the phenomenon of inspiration, God introduces his Spirit into the spirit of man. To designate this act, both Paul and the NT writers in general use interchangeably the terms “apocalypse” or “pneuma” (revelation or breath, 1 Cor. 2:10; Gal. 1:11-12; 2 Thes. 2: 2).

“Inspiration is a breath that fills the sails of the moral being,” wrote F. Godet (“Revue Chrétienne”, April 1, 1982, p. 255, “Révélation”). It is the divine breath that exercises its action, in varying degrees, on the human personality.

It is resolved into a state, the state of man in which God gives in a particular way the light of his Spirit (“spiritus”, “pneuma”). Inspiration makes the natural man (“psuchikos”, psychic), incapable of discerning the things of God, a spiritual man (“Pneumatikos”, pneumatic), who receives his revelation with the ability to transmit it in “words” (Gr. “logoi”). ») …which the Spirit teaches» (1 Cor. 2:13-16).

This divine intervention can appear as a kind of contemplation or ecstasy; However, and in a general way, inspiration, which places man in an atmosphere conducive to the receptivity of the divine, is essentially “creative” or, more precisely, “revealing.”

All revelation, in the biblical sense of the word, appears to us as the more or less direct product of inspiration. God puts his Spirit in man to instruct him in some truth that he does not know, to communicate this truth to him.

There can be no confusion between revelation and inspiration: this is the means, while revelation is the objective. Revelation implies, presupposes inspiration, thanks to which it occurs.

All revelation is a communication that God gives to man. By inspiration, that is, by the action of his Spirit on the spirit of man, God gives the latter the ability to receive and interpret this communication.

This is what Paul means when he speaks of the knowledge of the things of God and the reception of the things of the Spirit of God, all made possible by the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:9-16).

We do not have to analyze here the psychological process that goes from the revealing act of God to the assimilation of the revelation. It will be enough to point out that, based on the Scriptures, divine inspiration is the instrument of two types of revelations:

(A) Particular revelations, which are of particular interest to an environment, a time, a group (e.g., the Lord’s order to Jacob not to take Canaanite women, but to go to Mesopotamia, Gen. 28:1 ; vision of the centurion Cornelius, Acts 10).

These revelations can be applied, due to the principles they teach, far beyond their primary object, but in principle they were of interest to the individual or immediate environment of those who received them,

(B) Revelations presenting a universal character, which interest all humanity. The object of it, as in all particular revelation, remains God, his will, his plan of salvation, his grace. However, instead of being of primary application to a single individual or to a limited community or to a particular time, these communications apply to all men.

They are imposed as a definitive, absolute normative expression of the will of God. It is then what is called Revelation, or general Revelation.

Thus, when the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush, it is Revelation, in what it entails is more intangible and more universal.

The Revelation of Horeb brings to Israel, and through Israel to the entire world and to all ages, the real and profound meaning of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In YHWH is defined, in his essence and eternal meaning, not only the God of the Decalogue and of the entire Old Testament, but also the God of Jesus Christ, who is Spirit and Life.

The summit of Revelation is the person of Christ. And Jesus Christ is also the instrument par excellence of Revelation; and, as a historical and universal manifestation of God, it can be called “The Revelation” in its sovereign expression.

This Revelation is both the fact constituted by the miracle of the incarnation, and the fruit of inspiration when contemplated in the light of prophetic preachings.

As far as we are concerned as believers, inspiration always has to do with the reading and interpretation of Revelation, that is, the Word of God. By the illumination of his Spirit, God does not give new revelations, but rather reveals to us the meaning and power of the word for our life and testimony.

Thanks to illumination, the Word of God becomes intelligible and directly personal to us: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16). For the believer before the Scriptures, inspiration translates into the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.

(b) Inspiration of Scripture.

Following Paul (2 Tim. 3:16), the term inspiration of the Scriptures designates a strictly divine act (“theopneustic”), the act of the Spirit of God by which both the general Revelation and the special revelations of God have been recorded in the written text of the Bible.

It designates, in an even more particular way, the act by which this text has become in its letter, in all its letter (“pasa graphe”), the material vehicle of a supernatural message, of the message of God.

Thus, it is a divine operation in which Scripture, in all its parts, has been given to men through the sacred editors, as a unique and infallible expression of the truth and will of God. This is the meaning of the inspiration of the Scriptures.

(c) Nature of inspiration.

The old notion of a literal inspiration, considering it as a mere “dictation”, which made the sacred editors mere mechanical transmitters of a message “fallen from the sky”, with “its letters, dots and orthographic signs”, reduced to nothing the individuality of the editors, and does not adjust to the reality of the Scriptures, which do not justify such a literalist conception (= inspiration of the letters).

Here a brief mention should be made of the history of the transmission of the Bible text. As far as the NT is concerned, although we do not possess any of the original writings and very few of the copies from the first centuries (due to the great destruction of copies of the NT during the persecution of Diocletian, 303 AD), it must be noted that This fact does not affect the “theopneustic” doctrine at all, due to the zeal displayed by men like Origen (2nd century) to restore the text in its integrity; the considerable amount of mss. of the NT (over 6,000) allows for useful comparative examinations; The extremely small number of variants, in addition to other factors, allows us to affirm that the Spirit of God has watched in a wonderful way to preserve the integrity of the apostolic text.

The reader of the NT can be assured, with traditional Greek recensions, that he possesses the sacred text in such a way that, for all practical purposes, it differs practically nothing from the primitive text.

Regarding the text of the OT, let us see below in a very summarized way the history of the transmission of its text. After returning from exile (5th century BC) the majority of Hebrews no longer understood, or understood very little, the original biblical language, that is, ancient Hebrew.

They spoke Aramaic, the language of Babylon (also called Chaldean), which had another alphabet.
It was then that, undoubtedly responding to a special call from the Spirit, the rabbis and the Masoretes, those men of tradition who had preserved the use of the old text, transcribed it into the Aramaic alphabet. From him come the characters that make up the square Hebrew of our Masoretic Bibles.

They transcribed it (they did not translate it). This is of great importance. That is why we can speak of an inspired text, since, although this cannot be applied strictly to the translations (Alexandrian, Latin, as well as the Versions into living languages), on the other hand, since the text of our Hebrew Bibles is a transcription, not a translation, of the inspired text, this is also an inspired text.

And it is on par with the ancient Hebrew original, in that each of its consonants corresponds to a consonant equivalent to that of the original, and in that, in this way, each word of the Masoretic text corresponds exactly, due to its characters. equivalent alphabeticals and by the number of their letters, to the word of the original whose place it takes.

Furthermore, the paratextual signs of vocalization and accentuation, with their strict respect for the consonantal text due to its marginal position, constitute an admirable complementary guarantee of the integrity of the text. They accurately fix the pronunciation and traditional reading of words and phrases.

It is for these reasons that it can be affirmed that, despite the disappearance of the primitive text, we practically possess the original text of the OT. This has been further confirmed by the discoveries of the Dead Sea, with the discovery of ancient manuscripts of Isaiah and other books of the Bible.

Its comparison with the oldest manuscripts that were possessed until now has allowed us to confirm that the textual variations, in the copying process, have been practically negligible, for all practical purposes, for a period of 1,000 years (see BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS and QUMRÁN ( MANUSCRIPTS OF).

The history of the NT text, and more clearly that of the OT text, allows us to provide the testimony of the Scriptures, regarding its inspiration, with a solid material basis. We can affirm that we have the words of the old lost texts. Based on this, we can speak of verbal inspiration.

The concept of verbal inspiration implies inspiration from words, and not from mere ideas. Because if the letters traced by Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., have disappeared due to the previously indicated fact of transcription, the words have remained, and we can read them in our Masoretic Bibles.

Furthermore, and in view of this providential fact of the transcription, it would seem inconceivable that God could have revealed and inspired ideas without at the same time inspiring the words that express them.

The Bible presents us with the process of inspiration of the Scriptures as the act by which God puts words, terms, into the mouths of the sacred writers. Thus, the Bible is the Word of God.

Thus, we read, in the OT, what God said to Moses: «I will raise up a prophet for them from among his brothers, like you; and I will put my words in his mouth »(Deut. 18:18). Also to Jeremiah: “Jehovah said, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:9).

These words, these terms that Jehovah put in his mouth, were they not perhaps those that the sacred authors also passed through their pens in their writings?

In the NT we read what Paul says; His testimony confirms all other NT testimonies. He affirms “that the gospel announced by me is not according to man; for I did not receive it nor did I learn it from any man, but by revelation from Jesus Christ” (cf. Gal. 1:11-12; 1 Cor. 15:1-4).

“We thank God, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you received it not as the word of men, but as true, the word of God” (1 Thes. 2:13). “He who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who also gave us the Holy Spirit from him” (1 Thes. 4:8).

Thus, it is clear what the Bible says. It is not that God revealed feelings or ideas to the prophets or apostles. These are messages (exactly, words or terms). It is truly the Word of God, a revealed word, given as such by God, Father or Son, through the Holy Spirit.

Verbal inspiration applies to both Testaments. Any citation in the NT, where a misattribution of authorship appears to be made (e.g., in Mt. 27:9 a prophecy found in Zech. 11:13 is attributed to Jeremiah), cannot be used to object. to this statement. We are very far from being able to affirm that these quotes are truly erroneous.

(As for this example from Mt. 27:9, Jeremiah could well have uttered the prophecy, which would have been later reproduced by Zechariah. Zechariah came after Jeremiah.

And there are many examples in which the prophets quote his predecessors. On the other hand, there is also the custom that the main divisions of the Scriptures were named after the main book that headed them.

Jeremiah was often used to denote all prophets. One way or another, there is no basis for claiming that we have any errors here.)

«The admission of the principle of verbal inspiration implies its admission for all the writings of the OT and NT. Because, in the same way that when the miracle is admitted, the supernatural is admitted, and therefore the possibility of all miracles, in the same way when the verbal inspiration of the prophets is admitted, the principle and, consequently, the possibility are admitted. of the verbal inspiration of the entire Bible” (J. Cadier: “Le Prophétisme du Réveil”, PP. 63-66).

(d) The personality of the sacred writers.

The notion of “inspiration to dictation” suppresses the individuality of sacred writers, by making the latter passive and mechanical organs. The conception of verbal inspiration respects the indisputable fact of the personality of the sacred writers, which is evident in the reading of the Bible.

It is an evident fact that a style of Isaiah, a style of Amos, etc. appears. Each book of the Word of God presents the imprint of the personality of the one who wrote it under the direction of the Spirit.

It is in the Exodus where we frequently read terms that highlight God’s initiative in Moses’ message: “The Lord spoke to Moses”; “Jehovah spoke to Moses.” And it is in this same book that the personality of the great prophet is noted, perhaps more intensely than in any other section of the Pentateuch (cf. Ex. 3 and 4).

The Lord made Jeremiah, so to speak, his instrument, his man, to such an extent that the prophet could write: “You seduced me, O Lord, and I was seduced” (Jer. 20:7). And that is why this man subjugated by the Lord does not stop revealing to us his hours of crisis, discouragement or anguish. “Cursed is the day that I was born” (Jer. 20:14).

And he will come to exclaim, in the midst of his sufferings (and God does not prevent him or forbid him to record it in writing): “I will remember him no more, nor will I speak any more in his name” (Jer. 20 : 9).

Yes, the men of God remained men, and it is a miracle of God that He subjugated them without having suppressed them, in order to allow them to give us, with their human struggles, the secret of the victories of the Spirit.

We have numerous examples, in the NT, of the reactions of the disciples and apostles, both before and after his conversion. Let us remember the apostle Peter, and also the apostle Paul (Rom. 7).

Paul’s letters reveal to us with great clarity, perhaps greater than any of the other books of the NT, the personality of the sacred writers. They show us that the authors preserve, in the words of P. F. Jalaguier: “under divine intervention, all their intellectual and moral capacity…submitted, like us, to the duty of vigilance and prayer…”

They claim to announce what they have seen and known; They distinguish, in certain cases, between their personal opinion and the mandatory prescriptions of the Spirit; sometimes they are in doubt (1 Cor. 1:16; 2 Cor. 12:2-3); they dispute, they argue, they appeal to their good faith (Ex. 3 and 4; Rom. 9:1; 2 Cor. 1:18, 23; Gal. 1:20), and they appeal to the conscience and intelligence of their hearers.

Verbal inspiration is a miracle, the miracle of a “spiritual incarnation,” in the words of Adolphe Monod. To give an account in a few words of the reality of divine inspiration and the human element in inspiration, it can be said that to communicate His Word to man, and to do so, in the words that, in human languages, had to express them in In the most appropriate way, God chose specific men.

He chose them, providing them with the aptitudes, gifts, reactions and other personal characteristics, to prepare them in a special way so that they would be, with their integral personalities, the most appropriate channels for what at each moment in history God wanted to reveal to men. to incarnate his Word through them. He did not ask these men to contribute their own words.

He gave them his own words. But to give his word, in the hearts of men, all the echo that he desired to give, he saw fit to use, at the same time as the diverse temperaments and talents of those men specially designed for this mission, the same vocabulary of those who he took as his spokespersons.

Thus, to give the multiform revelation of him, with the different emphases of him, but with the same central purpose, the language of John is not that of Paul, that of Isaiah is not that of Ezekiel. We have here God calling the prophet, the apostle, from the womb of his mother, from eternity itself (cf. Jer. 1:5; Luke 1:5-17; Acts 9:15, etc.) .

Thus, the phenomenon of inspiration not only touches the emission of the message from God, but also the creation of the sacred writer, with his integral personality, to be the one who transmitted the word of God to his generation and to the universal audience beyond the world. time and space.

In summary, when speaking of verbal inspiration, it is highlighted that the supreme Author of the Scriptures, of all Scripture, is the Word (“logos”, “verbum”), that is, God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
When speaking of verbal inspiration, the way of perceiving biblical inspiration is also implied.

Inspiration is characterized by an understood message, received by the sacred writer in his spirit. By thus receiving the divine message, the prophet perceived the most appropriate terms for the oral or written expression of this message. This is how the Lord could say to Jeremiah: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:9).

Thus, to speak of verbal inspiration is to affirm once again that God, the Supreme Word, has inspired the biblical authors even in the words they transmitted to us. God used the gifts that He gave to the human instruments that He chose, to give His Word the various tones that He deemed necessary to give it.

But it is He, God, who speaks through these instruments, and precisely through their diversity. “The holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21).

The concept of verbal inspiration also brings inspiration not only to the men who were the momentary instruments, but to the writings that were to constitute the permanent record and vehicle of the Revelation.

(e) The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.

It remains to briefly consider the agent of the perception and assimilation of the Bible, the Word of God, that is, the indispensable action of the Holy Spirit, as the One who gives the key to the Scriptures to the believer.

The Bible is the Word of God, but how can this objective reality produce a subjective experience? How can the Bible become a living and effective Word for us? Through the action of the Holy Spirit in us.

Being as it is the work of the Spirit, the Scripture cannot be read, nor become understandable nor active in our salvation except by the interpretation given by the Holy Spirit, that is, by the interpretation of the Lord in us.

This is what the apostle Paul was referring to when he wrote to the Corinthians: “For to this day, when (the Jews) read the old covenant, the same veil remains unrevealed, which is taken away by Christ” (2 Cor. 3:14).

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and of Christ, whom He promised to send to His disciples to guide them “into all truth” (John 16:13), the Holy Spirit, the author of the Bible, is the only one which is qualified to give its meaning, and to remove the veil that darkens and closes the eyes and heart of the natural man.

The unconverted man, who stands before the Bible with his Greek mentality, his reason, his feeling, is determined not to assume that the Bible is the Word of God, that is, the word that God has written for him in the Bible, the word that addresses him in a personal way, the word written for his own regeneration, his sanctification and his calling to be a child of God.

The Holy Spirit, in his work in the human heart, not only bears witness to the believer that he is the son of God (Rom. 8:16), but also opens the seals that until then prevented him from accessing the God’s word.

He himself is the key to this Word. “But as it is written: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him. But God revealed them to us by the Spirit; because the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For which of men knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:9-11).

Calvin, to whom it was given to formulate the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, summarizes his thoughts thus (“Institution of the Christian Religion I”. 7): “The authority of the Scriptures is sealed, confirmed in the hearts of the faithful by the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit… The same Spirit who wrote the Bible speaks to the faithful and illuminates the pages of the Bible.

The possession of the Holy Spirit, which regenerates, sanctifies, consoles and leads to all truth; which is the current and permanent expression of the presence of the Lord; that God has given to everyone who believes in Jesus the Lord and receives him by faith (John 7:39; Gal. 3:13-14), this is the essential and necessary condition for the personal and life-giving appropriation of the Bible, the Word of God.

And the certainty that the Spirit has given us is confirmed by the joy that comes from the possession of divine life, and by the perfect harmony between the Bible (the objective testimony of the Spirit) and the internal testimony of the Spirit himself.

Because the Spirit is not divided: The Spirit who illuminates the believer cannot do anything other than say amen to what he himself has given in the Bible.