The Breadth of Inspiration

Musicians, poets or graphic artists will often claim to be “inspired” to produce a particular composition or design. Like the ancient Hebrew prophets, they feel themselves “seized,” “filled” or “carried away” by some invading power. A force from beyond themselves takes control of their mental faculties and guides or compels them toward an expression of beauty and truth.

The end product may be something they had previously imagined in inchoate form, or it may be something astonishingly new and unforeseen. A prophet may speak an oracle whose content he doesn’t fully understand because its message is addressed to a wider audience. An artist may want to capture and express something beautiful without any clear idea as to how to proceed. Yet at the moment she begins to execute her work, she finds herself filled and motivated by a force that is not her own, to create beyond her capacities, beyond the limits of her natural talents.

Inspiration takes other forms as well. A priest receives a penitent in confession and hears an appeal for help, guidance and consolation that he is incapable of offering. Silently he begs God to speak through him, to provide him with the words and tone of voice he needs to address the penitent’s situation with clarity, firmness and compassion. Then, mysteriously, the appropriate words come. The priest replies to the person before him, yet he knows full well that the words he speaks are not his own. Insofar as they correct, heal and bless the penitent, he can only attribute those words to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Hebrew term ruach, like the Greek word pneuma, covers an entire range of meanings for which we need several different expressions in English. Those words we usually translate as “spirit” signify most basically “breath,” either human or divine. By extrapolation they also designate the “cosmic breath,” that is, the “wind” that comes from beyond. We hear its sound but we know not “whence it comes or whither it goes” (Jn 3:8). These are words Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit, who, like the wind, is an invisible but palpable and mysterious power, whose origin and purpose remain unfathomable.

We tend to think of inspiration as being limited to the author of a work of art or a book of the Bible. The artist is seized and compelled to create by the muse, or the apostle is moved to express the Word of God under the guidance of the Spirit. “All scripture is inspired by God,” St Paul tells his disciple Timothy (1 Tim 3:16). The second letter of Peter (1:20-21) expresses the same thought, but with an important addition: “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Both passages stress the basic thought that God’s Word is authoritative and true. Although it is expressed in human language, it is language inspired by God, with its origin in God. The Spirit works in and through the mind and experience of the biblical author, to shape his message in a way that conforms to God’s intention to reveal Himself and His purpose through the author’s own words. Scripture is thus a work of synergy: it is a cooperative effort by which God conveys His Word through the medium of human thought and speech.

The passage from 2 Peter, however, takes this a crucial step further. Scripture as a whole derives from the inspiration of the Spirit, yet the same is true with all authentic and authoritative interpretation of Scripture. The correct reading of prophecy or Scripture is never “a matter of one’s own interpretation,” but “moved by the Holy Spirit,” the prophet utters God’s Word and we receive, understand and internalize that Word. As one Protestant scholar has expressed it, “Without the internal testimony of the Spirit, Scripture remains mute in its witness to the truth.”¹

This means that whenever we read Scripture and attempt to understand its deepest meaning, we can reach that understanding only by the inspiration of the Spirit (professional exegetes take note!). For the Spirit works within our own mind and heart just as He did when He first inspired the biblical authors to compose the canonical writings. What distinguishes their interpretation from ours is not inspiration, but authority. (A work is not “more or less inspired,” but it is definitely more or less authoritative: the canon is normative and absolutely authoritative; the Church Fathers possess varying degrees of authority; and anyone who proclaims the gospel today shares that same authority but to a lesser degree that depends on the faithfulness with which they express the gospel message. Yet insofar as any of them proclaim God’s truth, they are inspired by the Spirit to do so. Without the Spirit there is no genuine interpretation.)

Here as well an indispensable synergy comes into play. Before the Gospel reading at the Divine Liturgy we ask God to illumine our hearts and to open our minds to understand what the Gospel teaches. For that illumination to occur, however, we need to hear both the words of the Scripture reading and those of the priest who interprets those words. (This is why the sermon should always follow immediately upon the Gospel reading and not be relegated to the end of the service. Scripture and its interpretation form an indivisible whole.) The priest, or any other person in the assembly who preaches, should also be open to the inspirational activity of the Spirit. Thereby an essential continuity is maintained from the initial writing of the Scriptures to their proclamation within the Church.

As they composed their writings, the New Testament authors in effect interpreted the Old Testament. The New Testament, then, is essentially preaching or exposition, based on God’s words and acts among the people of Israel that prophesied and prepared for the coming of Christ. Subsequently, the ancient Fathers of the Church took up, studied and meditated on the writings included in both Testaments, then they produced their own interpretations of those writings in the form of homilies, theological treatises and biblical commentaries. Like the prophets of the Old Covenant and the apostles of the New, the Fathers opened themselves to the ongoing work of the Spirit, seeking His inspiration in order that their preaching might be faithful to God’s intention to reveal Himself and to lead believers to salvation. There is, then, total continuity of inspiration from the prophets and apostles, to the Church Fathers, and on to those in each generation who preach God’s Word.

Second Peter, however, suggests that inspiration also plays a vital role in our understanding of and response to the proclamation that has come down to us. Inspiration involves not only prophets, apostles, patristic authors and preachers. It also involves each one of us who hears the Word of God and attempts to put it into practice. If we can allow the Word to resonate in our life, if we are to “hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk 11:28), we can do so only by the inspirational power and activity of the Holy Spirit.

Inspiration, then, is an ongoing work of God that involves all of us. To read and truly understand a passage of Scripture, or to hear in depth the words of a sermon, is in fact possible only by virtue of the illumination provided for us by the Holy Spirit. The prophets and apostles were moved by the Spirit to speak the Word of God, and the ancient Fathers were moved by the Spirit to continue the work of interpretation that constitutes patristic tradition. Each time we take up the Scriptures to read for our own enlightenment, or to tell a Bible story to our children, or to proclaim a message of hope to those who need to hear it, we ourselves enter into that same movement of the Spirit.

We open our minds and hearts to understand the Word of God as it comes to us through Scripture, but also through the Liturgy and through the entire range of ascetic practices and charitable acts that make up our daily life in Christ. Then, by the power and guidance of the Spirit, by His internal testimony, we receive the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be transformed by it, and we bear witness to its truth, so that others, by the grace of that same Spirit, might hear and believe.

1. P. J. Achtemeier, The Inspiration of Scripture (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), 138. ↩︎