On Inspiration
Presumably delivered in Buenos Aires, or perhaps in Montevideo, in the Spring of 1963
By Father Leonardo Castellani
Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope
The Bible, gentlemen, to Christians and Hebrews alike, is the word of God; for many learned men it is the object of arduous research, and it has been so for twenty centuries; for many poets, if is a coffer of sublime poetry; and for all, it is a matter that will generate curiosity and be brought to public attention and public discussion by the current Vatican Ecumenical Council — as well as by journalists. That's why we´re here to learn something about it.
I delivered these lectures recently — still convalescing of surgery — in Uruguay, because a friend of mine had asked me to do so, and because I enjoy talking about Sacred Scripture. As you shall see, these are scientific lessons, not preaching, therefore they can serve Catholics and Hebrews, Protestants, and even atheists should it come to that. They have been sponsored by this Parish as a homage to the Ecumenical Council, which will deal with Scripture if I'm not mistaken, and I would be much surprised if it were not to do so.
To Catholics and Hebrews, as I just said, the Bible has been inspired by God; it is the "Sacred Books", much questioned and attacked these days — but also defended. On them the religious faith of practicing Christians and Hebrews is founded.
What does "inspired" mean? It means that God is their main cause, and for that reason it can be called simply "the word of God". We Catholics believe that God deigned to make a revelation to men about Himself, and for that reason he used this manner of word: "He who created speech cannot speak?" Yes, but if He speaks, His word has to be quite special.
How did God go about speaking, or (technically) what is the nature of His inspiration? This is an object of discussion, scientific and theological, on which all opinions possible have been expressed, not being it possible to add a single different one, and about which numberless books have been written. I will set it forth; first by giving a paradigm of all opinions, then making an exegesis of a passage in Scripture (since movement is proved by walking), and finally expounding the exact and true theory. I propose in these lessons to proceed with examples rather than by abstractions: “breve iter per exempla, longum iter per praecepta”, would the ancient pedagogy claim: "short is the way of example, long is the way of precepts."
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Jesus assumed as His the assertion of the Jews that the books of the Thorah (the Old Testament for us) were the Word of God, and likened His own preaching with that of the Hebrew prophets, and afterwards the Apostles did likewise. This is a fact.
This is the reason why we believe in the Divine inspiration of Scripture, and there is no other one. This one is more than enough: Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Son of God, canonized the books we call "the Bible", Greek word meaning " the books". The Bible cannot err because Christ cannot err; the Bible contains Divine Revelation because Jesus Christ was Divine Revelation. Thus, to the question "How do you understand this passage of Scripture?" the answer is: "I understand it as Jesus Christ understood it". This is the basis of exegesis — "And how did Christ understand it?" Here comes the task of the exegesis; that is, of interpretation, about which we will talk in the third lesson.
My teacher, Father Van Laack used to say that in the New Testament (that is, in the sacred books proceeding from Jesus Christ and His Apostles) there were 3,000 quotes or allusions to the books of the Old Testament. I have not counted them, though I suppose it is exact, but what interests me is that fifteen times in the Gospels, Jesus Christ appeals to Sacred Scripture against His adversaries, giving it as Word of God: "Have you not heard the Spirit of God from the mouth of Isaiah the Prophet, who says (this or that) — and Scripture cannot err?" says Jesus Christ. And the Apostles continue with this same attitude. This is the unshakeable foundation of the Catholic faith on the "inspiration" of Sacred Scripture. It is not the same foundation that the Jews have. Bur it is the foundation that Hebrew philosopher Bergson had in placing Jesus Christ on the same line as the Hebrew prophets — and above them, by the way, in his book "The Two Sources of Morals and Religion"; the last of his books.
This is sufficient to tell us about the incomparable treasure we have in our hands in the Holy Books. If at the time of Jesus someone had announced to the entire world that in some forgotten place in the Roman Empire, in Palestine, God was speaking face-to-face with men, would not numberless people have gone there to listen directly the message of God Himself? But now all of us for a few dollars or for none can have that message, called "the Good News", ευβχνγελος, the Beautiful News, and we do not read it — or we read it quite seldom; I confess that I read it much less than I should.
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The most solemn moment when Jesus Christ canonizes the books of the Old Testament is in his conversation with the disciples of Emaus. The latter, full of consternation for the tragedy at Calvary, said to the pilgrim stranger: "What? Have you not heard what happened to Jesus the Nazarene? We had thought God was with him and that he was to restore the Kingdom of Israel... But he failed. He has been crucified. Certainly, some of our women have been telling us that they found his sepulcher empty. But..." This "but" is loaded with this sentence: "but who pays attention to those women sayings?" Jesus got mad, above all, I suppose, for this judgment about the Saintly Women. "Oh, fools and slow of heart in getting to believe all that the prophets have said!" And taking the lead, He began interpreting for them all that had been written about Him in the Books, beginning with Moses up through Malachi, the last of the prophets; namely, that it would be convenient that the Awaited Messiah should suffer and die, so as to be able to enter His Kingdom. They were astonished and recognized Him later in the "breaking of bread"; that is, probably, in the unforgettable gesture with which Christ instituted the Eucharist.
Christ did not explain how God had gone about making the Holy Books, even though he suggested it by saying that God spoke through the mouth of the prophets, wherefrom the early Holy Fathers drew the other comparison, of the instrument at the hands of the artist, like Saint Justin, who says: "as the plectrum at the hands of the musician who plays the lyre or the cither."
Dictation was Luther's first position, or so it seems; it is also that of the ancient Jewish exegesis, the which is divided between the two extremes, the rationalist extreme, and the opposite, fanatic one of the dictation, which a Jewish sect called "the Kabbala" has carried to the extreme of extravagance; and finally, many protestant sects, as for instance the "Jehovah Witnesses". I have a weekly review published by this sect, called 'Despertad' (Awaken) which is printed in New York City, in three and a half million copies, in all languages (including an awful Spanish for Latin American consumption) in which, with indignation, the statement that the birth of Christ from a Virgin is just a myth is rejected; it is rejected on grounds of the "dictation", which approximates them to the Catholics much more than the rationalist doctrine that the Virginal Conception of Christ is a "midrash", that is, a "myth", even though it approximates them by virtue of a false idea: God did not dictate Scripture, since if it were so, there would be no errors in Scripture, and there are minor errors in Scripture.
The rationalist doctrine of "common poetic inspiration" likens the Holy Scripture with the works of Homer, Dante or Lugones, let's say, therefore evacuating from it all prophecy and all inerrancy, of course, and all Revelation. But we cannot call Word of God the works of Lugones or the Divine Comedy of Dante's. Jesus Christ would then have erred in calling those books Word of God. Obviously, he who does not believe in the Divinity of Christ has to adopt such opinion, which has become today quite harmful and dangerous, and of which we will see much in the Third Conference.
Of the other intermediate opinions I will give you some major examples; some of them are negative; It suffices for divine inspiration that God approve of a book once it has been written — said a great Catholic theologian called Leonardo Lessio, as well as the Protestant Haneberg, and since the Church approved the Gospels and Jesus Christ approved the Old Testament, by having done this, He made them Divine Word. Similar to these are the opinions of Holden and John, that God simply disposed that the hagiographer or prophet not commit any serious error, said Monsignor D'Huist and others, that is, an error in doctrine or morals; and finally, the famous theory of the 'obiter dicta' of Cardinal Newman, that so much difficulty gave to Vatican Council [I], that is, that God did not inspire the things that are said in passing, "by and by" is the phrase used by Newman, in Latin, "obiter dicta": God inspired only important things. This theory overcomes the difficulty of the errors in Scripture but makes a kind of dissection in it, for which reason the adherents of this theory are justly called 'vivisectionists'. Who is going to resolve which are the things said in passing and which others are said in seriousness? and what is the criterion to distinguish them? — What the Holy Mother Church says, answered Newman. But in twenty centuries Holy Mother Church has not defined one single time what in Holy Scripture is "said in passing" and not inspired by God, and she will never say it.
All these negative explanations (though maybe just in part) collide with the expression "Word of God". If I approve of a book, not for that reason is the book the word of mine. If of "El Estado Comunitario" (The Communitarian State) by Jaime María de Mahieu I say that I find not a single phrase of which I do not approve (as in fact I have said) not for that reason is that my book nor am I its author and Mahieu only my mouth.
Other opinions say that Scripture is inspired by God because it contains prophesies that have been fulfilled (second of Luther's position) or because it contains a morality that is superior to any other, or because it contains sublime poetry. The discourse on the Bible by Donoso Cortés, which we were made to learn by memory in school, is well known; it adduces these three criteria:
"There is a book, treasure of a people, which has now become fable and humiliation of the land that in gone times was the star of the East, from which all the poets of the Western regions of the world have come to imbibe... this book is the Bible, the book par excellence"
"In it, Petrarch learned to modulate his wails; in it, Dante saw his terrifying visions; from that lit furnace, the poet of Sorrento drew the splendor of his cantos. Without it, Milton would not have caught woman in her first weakness, man in his first sin, Lucifer in his first conquest, God in His first frown... and to talk about our Spain, who taught master Fr Luis de León to be simply sublime? From whom did Herrera learn his high, imperious and robust intonation? Who inspired Rojas those lugubrious lamentations, full of pomp and majesty, and full of sorrow? In what school did Calderón learn to rise up to the eternal abodes on the quill of the winds?"
Etcetera. Of course, the young marquis of Valderrama does not exclude the main criterion of why the Bible is the word of God, the which criterion is the testimony of Christ; but his oratory would prolong these secondary criteria, which by themselves do not suffice to prove that Scripture is the word of God, though they incline the animus to accept it so.
This being said, I will proceed with the exegesis of the passage in Scripture about the Woman in Labor, in Revelation, to prepare the ground for the expounding on the true nature of the divine inspiration of the Holy Books — according to Catholics, mentioning first the two prime principles of biblical exegesis which are evident in themselves.
1st. Oriental literature is symbolic.
2nd. It should always be interpreted literally, unless that becomes impossible. This is what is called St Augustine's "golden rule". The allegoric, figurative, or moral interpretation comes afterwards.
Revelation Chapter XV contains an impressive description of the struggle between a Dragon and a Woman who gives birth to a son who is carried to heaven, and then she is isolated in the desert. It is evidently a symbol. Symbol of what? Either of the Virgin Mary, or of the Catholic Church, or of Israel. We say that it is a symbol of Israel, but of the "Israel of God" (as the Holy Fathers say), which in a certain way comprises the other two.
(Reading of the text and interpretation)
We ought to know the true nature of God´s inspiration, because we all have to make exegesis — a simple one — at least when we read the Gospels or they are read to us in Mass; we have to understand it rightly and not wrongly.
God inspired the prophets and hagiographers in a similar way as He inspires poets, but in a higher plane: this is the nature of the inspiration of the Holy Books. This has been said by Christ when He says that Isaiah was the mouth of God, and by St Justine where he says that prophets are as the cither is to a citherist; that is, an instrument.
Philosophers have a very important doctrine about the "instrument"; that is, about the principal cause and the instrumental cause, as they say. The effect proceeds in its entirety from the two causes, and all proceeds from both causes but not completely "totum sed non totáliter". An artist paints a picture with a paintbrush, he paints it all; you cannot say that in a portrait by Rembrandt the paintbrush paints the shadows and the painter paints the lights; the entire portrait is made by the paintbrush and by the painter. there is not a single stroke that does not proceed from both, but naturally the picture is the expression of the painter, not of the paintbrush, the which only transmits it, except that in the case of the prophets, the transmission is not a mechanical one, it is through a live brush: therefore, Christ's metaphor, "a mouth" is better than St. Justin's "a cither".
So, for St. Thomas it is enough to simply say that the prophets were the "instrumental cause" of the Holy Books, but just as the paintbrush influences the picture only with its own nature, since the picture does not come out the same if the paintbrush is wide or if it is fine; it is not the same if the painter uses a spatula or a brush, in the same way, the Holy Book contains the Prophet's characteristics, his style, his education, his knowledge, his environment, and even his errors if God did not deem it necessary to suppress them; thus, Isaiah, who was a nobleman in the court of King Uzziah, writes with elegance, and Amos, who was a shepherd in the plains of Thekôa, writes roughly. Because that is simply God's general way of acting on men; he does not destroy their natures — why would He destroy them when He created them? — he acts through them by being inside them. This is what theologians say, that the supernatural presupposes the natural, and that grace does not destroy nature but completes and elevates it. Had God dictated Scripture, He would have eliminated man, His instrument.
God elevates the sacred poet to the supernatural plane in which God's action is not immediate and direct, but mediate and indirect. God raises the sacred poet to a height or summit, let us say, where they see things that natural man at his own plane cannot see. The Prophet is conscious that he is speaking in the name of God and with God's light; but it could well happen that the Prophet does not know all that God is saying through him; thus, we see that the ancient prophets speak of the two comings of the Messiah, sometimes without distinguishing one from the other — the founding of the Church and the Parousia, which are the type and its antitype; which are the two objects of all prophecy, as we shall see, which the Germans with all exactness call Zeichen and Gegenzeichen, that is, "figure" and "counterfigure". So likewise, the Evangelist in Chist's Eschatological Sermon speaks at the same time of the ruin of Jerusalem and of the end of times without distinguishing between those two events — the type and its antitype —, without distinguishing clearly, I shall say, because there is one word in St. Luke's that indicates two similar events separated by a long interstice.
The Prophet, then, is a cither, but a vital, rational and supernatural one; and his inspiration, though not the same as that of the profane poet, is similar to it, only better, only more elevated. Poets say someone inspires them, the Muse, they feel superior to themselves, it is not Homer who sings, it is the Muse:
Sing, O Muse, of Peleus' son, Achilles,
Of fateful vengeance and of rage do sing
Source of great ills fallen upon the Achaeans
All in fulfilment of the will of Jove
Who mighty warriors to the battle sent
So many souls he sent with such a fury
That countless bodies filled the plains and hillsUnburied lay, prey to the vultures and a feast to dogs
Musa, mihi causas mémora quo númine laeso
Quidve dolens regina deûm tot vólvere casus
Insignem pietate verum, tot adire labores
Impulerit. Tantæne animis coeléstibus irae?
The same does God with the sacred poet, but in a direct and supernatural manner performs the role of a muse. Everything in the book proceeds from the Prophet and from God; everything is inspired, but not everything in an equal degree; because just as in a poem there are essential words and others that are accidental (and in bad poets even filler — that is, superfluous — words) so is it that in Sacred Scripture all words are inspired by God but not all equally, that is, not all of equal importance. "The dog that came out to meet young Tobit was wagging its tail" — says the book of Tobias. Did God also inspire that passage? Why not? He inspired the entire book on placing the Prophet on the plane of religious excitement; that is, of enthusiasm. Also Homer says that Ulysses' dog, Argos, wagged its tail on seeing him, and after describing it in thirty hexameters, tells us that it fell dead from the joy of seeing his master; in two superb hexameters full of music.
Дργον δ΄αΰ ηατά μοίρ΄ Ёλαβεν μέλανος Οανάτοιο αύτίή ίδόντα ΄Οδυσήα έειηοττώ ένιαυτώ
which means:
But the dark shadow of death enwraps Argos
Just as it recognizes Ulysses after a score of years
These verses are so inspired; that is, beautiful, as the rest of the poem; and the same goes for the tail of Tobit's dog; unless it is a superfluous filler, as it might well be; we shall see in what sense; in the sense of a cliché of oral style.
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