Proving Inspiration
The Protestant Reformers said that the Bible is
the sole authoritative source of religious truth, whose proper understanding
must be found by looking only at the words of the text itself. This is
the Protestant teaching of sola scriptura (Latin: by Scripture alone).
According to this teaching, no outside authority may mandate an interpretation,
because no outside authority, such as the Church, has been established
by Christ as an arbiter to determine which of the conflicting interpretations
is correct.
There is perhaps no greater frustration in dealing
with Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants, than in trying to pin
them down on why the Bible should be taken as a rule of faith at all, let
alone the sole rule. It reduces to the question of why Fundamentalists
accept the Bible as inspired, since the Bible can be taken as a rule of
faith only if it is first held to be inspired and, thus, inerrant.
Now, this is a problem that doesn’t keep many nominal
Christians awake at night. Most have never even given it any serious thought.
To the extent that they believe in the Bible, they do so because they operate
in a milieu that is, if post-Christian in many ways, still steeped in Christian
presuppositions and ways of thought.
A lukewarm Christian who would not give the slightest
credence to the Koran would think twice about casting.aspersions on the
Bible. It has a certain official status for him, even if he cannot explain
why. You might say that he accepts the Bible as inspired (whatever that
may mean to him) for some "cultural" reason, but that is hardly an adequate
reason, since on such a basis that would mean the Koran rightly would be
considered inspired in a Muslim country.
"It Inspires Me"
Some Fundamentalists say they believe the Bible
is inspired because it is "inspirational," but that is an ambiguous term.
On the one hand, if used in the strict theological sense, it clearly begs
the question, which is: How do we know the Bible is inspired, that is,
"written" by God, using human authors as instruments?
But if "inspirational" means nothing more than
"inspiring" or "moving," then someone might decide that the works of Shakespeare
are inspired. Furthermore, parts of the Bible, including several whole
books of the Old Testament, cannot at all be called "inspirational" in
this sense. One bears no disrespect in admitting that some parts of the
Bible are as dry as military statistics—indeed, some parts are military
statistics—and offer little to move the emotions.
Witness of the Bible
What about the Bible’s own claim to inspiration?
There are not many places where such a claim is made even elliptically,
and most books in the Old and New Testaments make no such claim at all.
In fact, no New Testament writer explicitly claims that he himself is writing
at the direct behest of God, with the exception of John, the author of
Revelation.
Besides, even if every biblical book began with
the phrase, "The following is an inspired book," this would prove nothing.
A book of false scriptures can easily assert that it is inspired, and many
do. The mere claim of inspiration is insufficient to establish that something
is bona fide.
These tests failing, most Fundamentalists fall
back on the notion that "the Holy Spirit tells me the Bible is inspired,"
an exercise in subjectivism akin to their claim that the Holy Spirit guides
them in interpreting the text. For example, the anonymous author of How
Can I Understand the Bible?, a booklet distributed by the Evangelical
organization "Radio Bible Class," lists twelve rules for Bible study. The
first is, "Seek the help of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has been given
to illumine the scriptures and make them alive to you as you study them.
Yield to his enlightenment."
If one takes this to mean that anyone asking for
a proper interpretation will receive one from God—and that is exactly how
most Fundamentalists understand the assistance of the Holy Spirit to work—then
the multiplicity of interpretations, even among Fundamentalists, should
give people a gnawing suspicion that the Holy Spirit has not been doing
his job very well.
No Rational Basis
Most Fundamentalists do not say in so many words
that the Holy Spirit has spoken to them directly to assure them of the
inspiration of the Bible. Rather, in reading the Bible they say that they
are "convicted" that it is the word of God, they get a positive "feeling"
that it is inspired, and that’s that. But this reduces their acceptance
of the Bible to the influence of their culture, habit, or any number of
other emotional or psychological factors.
No matter how it is examined, the Fundamentalist
position is not one that is rigorously reasoned out. It is a rare Fundamentalist
who, even for sake of argument, first approaches the Bible as though it
is not inspired and then later, upon reading it, syllogistically concludes
that it must be. In fact, Fundamentalists begin with the fact of
inspiration—just as they take the other doctrines of Fundamentalism as
premises, not as conclusions—and then they find passages in the
Bible that seem to support inspiration. They finally "conclude," with obviously
circular reasoning, that the Bible confirms its inspiration, which they
knew all along.
The man who wrestles with the Fundamentalist approach
to inspiration is eventually unsatisfied, because he knows that the Fundamentalist
has no sound basis for his belief. So where does one find a reasonable
proof for the inspiration of Scripture? Look no further than the Catholic
Church. Ultimately, the Catholic position is the only one that proves conclusively
the divine inspiration of Scripture, the only one that can satisfy a person
intellectually.
The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be
inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient
work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism
we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more
certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.
An Accurate Text
Sir Frederic Kenyon, in The Story of the Bible,
notes that "For all the works of classical antiquity we have to depend
on manuscripts written long after their original composition. The author
who is the best case in this respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript
of Virgil that we now possess was written some 350 years after his death.
For all other classical writers, the interval between the date of the author
and the earliest extant manuscript of his works is much greater. For Livy
it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides
1,600." Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the
works of these writers. However, in the case of the New Testament we have
parts of manuscripts dating from the first and early second centuries,
only a few decades after the works were penned.
Not only are the biblical manuscripts that we have
older than those for classical authors, we have in sheer numbers
far more manuscripts from which to work. Some are whole books of the Bible,
others fragments of just a few words, but there are literally thousands
of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages.
This means that we can be sure we have an authentic text, and we can work
from it with confidence.
The Bible as Historical Truth
Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered
merely as a history, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament,
and more specifically the Gospels. We examine the account contained therein
of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what
we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with
what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason
alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what
he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy. (The one thing we know he could not
have been was merely a good man who was not God, since no merely good man
would make the claims he made.)
We are able to eliminate the possibility of his
being a madman not just from what he said but from what his followers did
after his death. Many critics of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection
claim that Christ did not truly rise, that his followers took his body
from the tomb and then proclaimed him risen from the dead. According to
these critics, the resurrection was nothing more than a hoax. Devising
a hoax to glorify a friend and mentor is one thing, but you do not find
people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they derive no benefit.
Certainly if Christ had not risen his disciples would not have died horrible
deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection. The result
of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose
from the dead. Consequently, his claims concerning himself—including his
claim to be God—have credibility. He meant what he said and did what he
said he would do.
Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both
the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not yet as an
inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established
a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy,
hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority.
We have thus taken the material and purely historically
concluded that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. Because of his Resurrection we have reason to take seriously his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name.
This Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired,
and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the Church is
infallible. Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—that
is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters
of faith—that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as
an inspired book.
A Spiral Argument
Note that this is not a circular argument. We are
not basing the inspiration of the Bible on the Church’s infallibility and
the Church’s infallibility on the word of an inspired Bible. That indeed
would be a circular argument! What we have is really a spiral argument.
On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as
it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded.
And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired.
This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible
is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible
is historically reliable), and its initial finding (the Bible is historically
reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired).
What we have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church,
we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.
Inadequate Reasons
The point is that Fundamentalists are quite right
in believing the Bible to be inspired, but their reasons for so believing
are inadequate. In reality this conviction can be based only on an authority
established by God to tell us the Bible is inspired, and that authority
is the Church.
And this is where a more serious problem comes
to light. It seems to some that it makes little difference why one believes
in the Bible’s inspiration, just so long as one believes in it. But the
basis for one’s belief in its inspiration directly affects how one proceeds
to interpret the Bible. The Catholic believes in inspiration because, to
put it bluntly, the Church tells him so and that same Church has the authority
to interpret the inspired text. Fundamentalists believe in inspiration,
though on weak grounds, but they have no interpreting authority other than
themselves.
Cardinal Newman put it this way in an essay on
inspiration first published in 1884: "Surely then, if the revelations and
lessons in Scripture are addressed to us personally and practically, the
presence among us of a formal judge and standing expositor of its words
is imperative. It is antecedently unreasonable to suppose that a book so
complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds,
times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard
of some authority; as if it could possibly from the nature of the case,
interpret itself. Its inspiration does but guarantee its truth, not its
interpretation. How are private readers satisfactorily to distinguish what
is didactic and what is historical, what is fact and what is vision, what
is allegorical and what is literal, what is [idiomatic] and what is grammatical,
what is enunciated formally and what occurs, what is only of temporary
and what is of lasting obligations. Such is our natural anticipation, and
it is only too exactly justified in the events of the last three centuries,
in the many countries where private judgment on the text of Scripture has
prevailed. The gift of inspiration requires as its complement the gift
of infallibility."
The advantages of the Catholic approach are two:
First, the inspiration is really proved, not just "felt." Second, the main
fact behind the proof—the reality of an infallible, teaching Church—leads
one naturally to an answer to the problem that troubled the Ethiopian eunuch
(Acts 8:30-31): How is one to know which interpretations are correct? The
same Church that authenticates the Bible, that attests to its inspiration,
is the authority established by Christ to interpret his word.
Interested in reading more about the Bible?
Check out these wonderful titles from the Bible and Theology section of our online Catalogue
(links open in a new window):
Bible
The Ignatius Bible, Hardcover format
The Ignatius Bible, Paperback
Vatican Publications
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pocket Edition
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
Bible Interpretation
Inside The Bible, Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Making Senses Out Of Scripture, Mark Shea
Where Is That In The Bible?, Patrick Madrid
Where We Got the Bible, Bishop Henry G. Graham
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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