More Than a Muse. The Charism That Makes the Written Word a Word of Life

This article first appeared in the Polish quarterly „Wieczernik" in 2018 under a different title. Translated from the Polish original: Więcej niż wena.

The Bible as a book carries divine authority, because it is the word of God. That truth would be acknowledged with one voice by all who bear the identity of Christ's disciples. But what makes this Book so particular — why are the words written there so singular? It is because the texts recorded in it are inspired texts. What that inspiration means is what we wish to examine here.

Naturally — as always when we move in the world of theology — certain concepts must first be clarified, for they mean something entirely different in everyday speech. Inspiration in the theological sense has nothing in common with the creative spark a poet or composer may experience, moved by some event or a beautiful view. Biblical inspiration is a particular gift of God and His active presence in the process of the biblical text coming into being — a presence that remains forever joined to the written word of the biblical books.

Scripture itself contains the truth that there exists a particular word coming from God, present in a special way in the mission of Moses and later of the prophets. In Jeremiah we read: "Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you" (Jer 36:2). In the New Testament we already find direct reference to the fact that the written texts left to us are God's gift and His speech (cf. 2 Tim 3:16 and 2 Pet 1:21).

In the later history of the Church, the understanding of biblical inspiration developed over centuries. For a long time it was conceived narrowly, as divine assistance given to those who wrote the books down. Today one speaks rather of the charism of inspiration. This charism did not reveal itself only in the immediate act of, say, a scribe writing on parchment. It should be understood as embracing the whole process of handing on the word of God, extending to the entire community to which that word was entrusted. In many cases in the Old Testament this was, for centuries, a living oral word passed from generation to generation, which only at a certain stage was set down in "paper" form. The charism of inspiration was not manifest only at the final link; it embraced the whole community of the Chosen People to whom God spoke.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about inspiration by recalling what the Second Vatican Council stated in its Constitution on Divine Revelation: God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more." Earlier the Catechism recalls the truth that God is the Author of Sacred Scripture: "Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."

An attentive reader should notice a certain apparent inconsistency in these two quotations. One speaks of human beings as the true authors of Scripture; the other states that these books have God as their Author and were handed on to the Church. In the case of Sacred Scripture — as in the case of the reality of the Church — we are dealing with a divine-human process. God chose His instruments and watched over them. This union of divine and human action allows us to say that the Bible is wholly the word of God and at the same time a true human word. God did not strip the writers of their human capacities of expression and understanding of the world; and yet, in everything concerning the truth about God and the work of salvation of the human race, they committed no error. The Constitution says further: "Since therefore all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."

The truth about the inspired, divine authority of Scripture in its relation to the truths discovered in nature by science has been a standing space of tension, felt with particular force in the nineteenth century. It remains a field of polemic to this day, and many of us have surely taken part in discussions of this kind — how, for instance, to understand the account of the creation of the world. Pope Leo XIII addressed this in one of his encyclicals, explaining that the sacred writers — or rather the Spirit of God who spoke through them — did not intend to teach people about the inner constitution of the visible world, since it would be of no profit to their salvation. Instead of carrying out exact investigations of nature, they described and presented these things either figuratively, or according to the common manner of speech of their time — a manner still in use today, even among the educated. And since ordinary speech expresses first and properly what falls under the senses, the sacred writer likewise presented things as they appeared to the senses — that is, as God Himself, speaking humanly to human beings, presented them in a human way for their better understanding.

These reflections on the inspiration of Scripture also remind us that the Bible is not a "revealed book" in the sense that God, bypassing the personal dimension of the human being, simply dictated certain truths as if in a spiritual trance — with suitably "entranced" writers serving as the printers of their day, transferring divine thoughts onto paper. Such a mistaken understanding of biblical inspiration is, I suspect, not at all rare. The Catechism reminds us: "Still, the Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book.' Christianity is the religion of the 'Word' of God, a word which is 'not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.' If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, 'open our minds to understand the Scriptures' (Lk 24:45)." The inspired text of Scripture contains the truth of the God who reveals Himself. Thanks to it, the revealed thought of God has remained in the written word — unfalsified through the charism of inspiration — has found its realisation and has been fulfilled.

Just as the person of Jesus, without the adherence of faith, remains for a person merely someone from the past — a rabbi from Nazareth killed in unhappy circumstances, His words without faith merely wise sayings like those of the Stoic philosophers — so too Scripture, without a relationship of faith, remains merely one more text of the Mediterranean basin. The gate of faith which opens for us a relationship with the Risen Jesus — eternally living, constantly speaking to His disciples and to the whole Church — also opens before us the power of the charism of biblical inspiration, which gives us an eternally living book that is, in every part, the speech of God. A speech that surpasses the whole Church, which does not stand above the written word of God but holds toward it a relationship of service.

One more matter deserves mention when we speak of biblical inspiration. It must be remembered that the charism of inspiration and all its consequences (including inerrancy in matters concerning the truth about God and salvation) applies to the original texts. It does not unconditionally extend to biblical translations — only insofar as they correspond to the real thought of the author.

To look upon the inspiration of Scripture as a dynamic reality of God acting in history and in the community of faith — through which we have received a living and unerring transmission of the truth about God and His action, expressed at the same time in the human manner of understanding and composing texts proper to the places and times of their origin — can help us experience the unceasing vitality of the biblical words. The conciliar text reminds us: "For in the sacred books the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life." Thanks to this, when we feed on the word of God, it can become for us a Word of Life.

Fr Bart Parys, SVD