Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/168

156 rather than in propositions, that if the Bible was altogether a communication of doctrinal truth there was much in the Scriptures which had not at first sight that appearance. The long histories, the tables of genealogy, did not contain doctrinal statements, or give rales of holy living. Were these portions inspired 1 The question does not require to be raised if we believe that inspiration implies simply that God has fully committed His revelation to writing, and that revelation is above all things God entering into human life and history for the salvation of His people ; for then the whole course of the history, with all the facts as well as the doctrines, contains the revelation. But if we take revelation to be only the delivery of doctrines, the question arises and disturbs our theory of inspiration. The fathers solved every difficulty here by appealing to allegorical interpretation, for allegory will turn the driest statistical details into a moral or doctrinal code ; but the Schoolmen were too dryly logical to be quite content with this explanation. They accepted the allegorical senses of Scripture, but many of them held, like Thomas Aquinas (Siimma ii. 2, qu. 1, art. 6 ; qu. 2, art. 2), that there were two kinds of inspiration in Scripture, the direct, which is to be found where doctrinal and moral truths are directly taught, and the indirect, which appears in historical pas sages, .whence the doctrinal and moral can only be in directly evolved by the use of allegorical interpretation. Many different opinions, however, were held about the details of the doctrine. Gregory the Great called the writers of Scripture the calami of the Holy Spirit, to denote how entirely the Bible was the work of God; while Agobard of Lyons asserted that the inspiration of Scripture did not exclude the presence of grammatical errors. Thomas Aquinas was content to say simply that God is the author of Scripture (Summa 1, qu. 1, art. 10) ; but elsewhere he discusses at some length the psychological aspects of the inspiration of the prophets. 4. The Reformers placed the authority of Scripture above the decrees of popes and councils, above the opinions of the fathers, above the whole digest of official interpreta tions of Scripture which made tradition. They regarded Scripture as the judge in all controversies in matters of faith and doctrine, and as the source whence came every article of belief; but besides this they held that Scripture was a means of grace, a principle of salvation, a means of awakening the new life in the hearts of God s people. This was the real gist of the Reformation doctrine of Scripture ; this was the main part in the contribution which the Reformers made to the doctrine of the word of God. The fathers had spoken of the practical importance of Scripture and its power for edification, but they had placed these qualities in a secondary position, and in the scholastic period Scripture came to be regarded as little more than a quarry for doctrines. The Reformers insisted that all doctrines must come from Scripture; they held that the Scripture was the book of the all-wise God, and was therefore the touchstone in matters of religious controversy, but they also held that above all the Scripture was the sword of the Spirit, and that its main use was to pierce the heart and conscience. According to the Reformers, the revelation of God was fully committed to writing in the Scriptures, and the inspiration of Scripture lay in this fact ; but they held that the special nature of inspiration must be derived from the purpose of God in this matter. God fully committed His revelation to writing, they argued, not merely to impart new knowledge to men, but also and principally to awaken His people to a new life ; and this purpose must appear in the statement of the doctrine of inspiration. Thus the Reformation doctrine of inspiration, while capable of statement in terms somewhat similar, was really different from the patristic and mediiuval theories, and it became more closely allied with the written Scrip tures, and paid less attention to the writers. It taught that Scripture as a whole, and the parts of Scripture looked at as parts of the one whole, were designed to be a means of grace, to awaken a new life in God s people, through the work of the Spirit, and thus the doctrine of inspiration was at once brought into connexion with and yet clearly separated from the spiritual illumination shared by all believers. It is allied because both the inspiration of Scripture and the enlightening work of the Spirit in the hearts of believers are parts of the plan of God whereby by His means of grace through the work of the Spirit He gathers believers into His kingdom ; it is quite distinct. for by it God wholly commits His revelation to writing, and so makes the Scripture able to appeal with the very power of God to the hearts and consciences of men. In this way the doctrine of inspiration was advanced a stage beyond what it had before reached, and indeed was raised to a higher platform. It was now seen that inspiration secured that the Scriptures should be instinct with God s power for salvation, as well as full of the knowledge which God has pleased to communicate to man. And thus in the hands of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli the doctrine of inspiration had for its correlative the doctrine of the Testimonium Spiritus Sancti ; the two doctrines supported and explained each other. The second raised the first out of the region of mechanical dictation, the first prevented the second degenerating into a mystical enthusiasm. The Reformers were content to leave the doctrine of inspiration without much further definition, but they took the full advantage of the spiritual form of the doctrine to use great freedom with the letter of Scripture. Their successors acted otherwise. 5. The Protestant Scholastic for the most part treated the Reformers doctrine of inspiration very much in the same way as the Schoolmen had treated the doctrine of the fathers. They did not deny the spiritual side of the doctrine ; they maintained that Scripture was a means of grace, a power of God to salvation ; but they did not bring this side forward much in their discussions about inspiration. They dwelt on the fact that inspiration secured accuracy, rather than on the fact that it brought with it spiritual power. They asked, When Scripture is the word of the all-wise God, what does this imply 1 And the answers were various. Gerhard held that it implied that the writers were the " pens," the " hands," the " amanuenses " of the Holy Ghost. We may with propriety, he says, call the prophets and the apostles "amanuenses Dei, Christi, manus et Spiritus sive tabel- liones sive notarios." Calovius and Quenstedt say the same. Quenstedt holds that everything in Scripture comes from the infallible divine assistance and direction, from a special suggestion and dictation of the Holy Spirit ; and he says that because Scripture is inspired it is of infallible truth and free from every error ; canonical Scripture con tains no lie, no falsehood, not the very slightest error either in fact or in word ; whatever things it relates, all and every one of them, are of the very highest truth, whether they be ethical or historical, chronological, topographical, or verbal ; there is no ignorance, no want of knowledge, no forgetfulness, no lapse of memory in Scripture. The framers of the Formula Consensus Helvetica went further, and declared that the Old Testament was "turn quoad con- sonas, turn quoad vocalia, sive puncta ipsa, sive punctorum saltern potestatem, et turn quoad res, turn quoad verba $eo7n/ev<TTos." On the other hand, Cappellus, led by his investigations into the antiquity of the Hebrew points, maintained that the inspiration of Scripture did not neces sarily demand perfect accuracy in details; and he declared that such accuracy not only did not exist in such editions as we have now, but never did exist, for manuscripts