Chapter VIII: The Holy Spirit and Inspiration (2)

2. But such a doctrine it does bring with it. Our Lord and His Apostles are clearly found to believe and to teach that the Scriptures of the Old Testament were given by inspiration of God; and the Christian Church from the earliest days postulated the same belief about the Scriptures of the New Testament. To disbelieve that 'the Scriptures were spoken by the Holy Ghost,' was equivalent to being 'an unbeliever[297].'

Thus, when once a man finds himself a believer in Christ, he will find himself in a position where alike the authority of his Master and the 'communis sensus' of the society he belongs to, give into his hand certain documents and declare them inspired.

3. What in its general idea does this mean?

S. Athanasius expresses the function of the Jews in the world in a luminous phrase, when he describes them as having been the 'sacred school for all the world of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life[298].' Every race has its special vocation, and we recognise in the great writers of each race the interpreters of that vocation. They are specially gifted individuals, but not merely individuals. The race speaks in them: Rome is interpreted by Virgil, and Greece by Aeschylus or Plato. Now every believer in God must see in these special missions of races, a Divine inspiration. If we can once get down to the bottom of human life, below its pride, its wilfulness, its pretentiousness, down to its essence, we get to God and to a movement of His Spirit[299]. Thus every race has its inspiration and its prophets.

But the inspiration of the Jews was supernatural. What does this mean? That the Jews were selected--not to be the school for humanity in any of the arts and sciences which involve the thought of God only indirectly, and can therefore be carried on without a fundamental restoration of man into that relation to God which sin had clouded or broken,--but to be the school of that fundamental restoration itself. Therefore, in the case of the Jews the inspiration is both in itself more direct and more intense, and also involves a direct consciousness on the part of its subjects. In the race, indeed, the consciousness might be dim; but the consciousness, as the prophets all assure us, did belong to the race, and not merely to its individual interpreters. They speak as recalling the people to something which they know, or ought to know, not as preachers of a new religion. They were 'the conscience of the state[300].' But special men, prophets, psalmists, moralists, historians, were thus the inspired interpreters of the Divine message to and in the race: and their inspiration lies in this, that they were the subjects of a movement of the Holy Ghost, so shaping, controlling, quickening their minds and thoughts and aspirations, as to make them the instruments through which was imparted 'the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life.'

Various are the degrees of this inspiration: the inspiration of the prophet is direct, continuous, absorbing. The inspiration of the writer of Ecclesiastes, on the other hand, is such as to lead him to ponder on all the phases of a worldly experience, passing through many a false conclusion, and cynical denial, till at the last his thought is led to unite itself to the great stream of Divine movement by finding the only possible solution of the problems of life in the recognition of God, and in obedience to Him.

Various also are the sorts of literature inspired: for the supernatural fertilizes and does not annihilate the natural. The Church repudiated the Montanist conception of inspiration, according to which the inspired man speaks in ecstasy, as the passive unconscious instrument of the Spirit; and the metaphors which would describe the Holy Spirit as acting upon a man 'like a flute player breathing into his flute,' or 'a plectrum striking a lyre,' have always a suspicion of heresy attaching to their use[301]. As the humanity of Christ is none the less a true humanity for being conditioned by absolute oneness with God, so the human activity is none the less free, conscious, rational, because the Spirit inspires it. The poet is a poet, the philosopher a philosopher, the historian an historian, each with his own idiosyncrasies, ways, and methods, to be interpreted each by the laws of his own literature. And just as truly as physiology, in telling us more and more about the human body, is telling us about the body which the Son of God assumed, so with the growth of our knowledge about the kinds and sequences of human literature, shall we know more and more about the literature of the Jews which the Holy Spirit inspired.

What then is meant by the inspiration of Holy Scripture? If we begin our inquiry with the account of creation with which the Bible opens, we may take note of its affinities in general substance with the Babylonian and Phoenician cosmogonies; but we are much more struck with its differences, and it is in these we shall look for its inspiration. We observe that it has for its motive and impulse not the satisfaction of a fantastic curiosity, or the later interest of scientific discovery, but to reveal certain fundamental religious principles: that everything as we see it was made by God: that it has no being in itself but at God's will: on the other hand, that everything is in its essence good, as the product of the good God: that man, besides sharing the physical nature of all creation, has a special relation to God, as made in God's image, to be God's vice-gerent: that sin, and all that sin brings with it of misery and death, came not of man's nature but of his disobedience to God and rejection of the limitations under which He put him: that in spite of all that sin brought about, God has not left man to himself, that there is a hope and a promise. These are the fundamental principles of true religion and progressive morality, and in these lies the supernatural inspiration of the Bible account of creation[302].

As we pass on down the record of Genesis, we do not find ourselves in any doubt as to the primary and certain meaning of its inspiration. The first traditions of the race are all given there _from a special point of view_. In that point of view lies the inspiration. It is that everything is presented to us as illustrating God's dealings with man--God's judgment on sin: His call of a single man to work out a universal mission: His gradual delimitation of a chosen race: His care for the race: His over-ruling of evil to work out His purpose. The narrative of Genesis has all the fullest wealth of human interest, but it is in the unveiling of the hand of God that its special characteristic lies. As we go on into the history, we find the recorders acting like the recorders of other nations, collecting, sorting, adapting, combining their materials, but in this inspired--that the animating motive of their work is not to bring out the national glory or to flatter the national vanity, nor, like the motive of a modern historian, the mere interest in fact, but to keep before the chosen people the record of how God has dealt with them. This, as we perceive, gives them a special sense of the value of fact[303]. They record what God has done, how God did in such and such ways take action on behalf of His peculiar people, delivering them, punishing them, teaching them, keeping them, disciplining them for higher ends. And none who have eyes to see God's spiritual purposes can doubt that those historians read aright the chronicles of the kings of Israel. The spiritual significance which they see is the true significance. God's special purpose was on Israel.

It is not necessary to emphasize in what consists the special inspiration of psalmists or of prophets. The psalmists take some of the highest places among the poets of all nations, but the poetic faculty is directed to one great end, to reveal the soul in its relation to God, in its exultations and in its self-abasements. 'Where ... did they come from, those piercing lightning-like gleams of strange spiritual truth, those magnificent out-looks upon the kingdom of God, those raptures at His presence and His glory, those wonderful disclosures of self-knowledge, those pure out-pourings of the love of God? Surely here is something more than the mere working of the mind of man. Surely ... they repeat the whispers of the Spirit of God, they reflect the very light of the Eternal Wisdom[304].'

In the case of prophets once more we get the most obvious and typical instances of inspiration[305]. The prophets make a direct claim to be the instruments of the Divine Spirit. Not that the Divine Spirit supersedes their human faculties, but He intensifies them. They see deeper under the surface of life what God is doing, and therefore further into the future what He will do. No doubt their predictive knowledge is general, it is of the issue to which things tend. It is not at least usually a knowledge 'of times and of seasons which the Father hath put in His own power.' Thus at times they foreshorten the distance, and place the great deliverance and the 'day of Jehovah' in the too immediate foreground[306]. The prophetic inspiration is thus consistent with erroneous anticipations as to the circumstances and the opportunity of God's self-revelation, just as the apostolic inspiration admitted of S. Paul expecting the second coming of Christ within his own life-time. But the prophets claim to be directly and really inspired to teach and interpret what God is doing and commanding in their own age, and to forecast what in judgment and redemptive mercy God means to do and must do in the Divine event. The figure of the king Messiah dawns upon their horizon with increasing definiteness of outline and characteristic, and we, with the experience of history between us and them, are sure that the correspondence of prophecy and fulfilment can be due to no other cause than that they spoke in fact the 'word of the Lord.'

Thus there is built up for us in the literature of a nation, marked by an unparalleled unity of purpose and character, a spiritual fabric, which in its result we cannot but recognise as the action of the Divine Spirit. A knowledge of God and of the spiritual life gradually appears, not as the product of human ingenuity, but as the result of Divine communication: and the outcome of this communication is to produce an organic whole which postulates a climax not yet reached, a redemption not yet given, a hope not yet satisfied. In this general sense at least no Christian ought to feel a difficulty in believing, and believing with joy, in the inspiration of the Old Testament: nor can he feel that he is left without a standard by which to judge what it means. Christ, the goal of Old Testament development, stands forth as the test and measure of its inspiration.

The New Testament consists of writings of Apostles or of men of sub-apostolic rank, like S. Luke and probably the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is not, except perhaps in the case of the Apocalypse, any sign of an inspiration to write, other than the inspiration which gave power to teach. What then is, whether for writing or for teaching, the inspiration of an Apostle?

If Jesus Christ both was, and knew Himself to be, the Revealer of the Father, it almost stands to reason that He must have secured that His revelation should be, without material alloy, communicated to the Church which was to enshrine and perpetuate it. Thus, in fact, we find that He spent His chief pains on the training of His apostolic witnesses. And all the training which He gave them while He was present among them was only to prepare them to receive the Holy Ghost Who, after He was gone, was to be poured out upon them to qualify them to bear His witness among men.

'Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be My witnesses:' 'These things have I spoken unto you while yet abiding with you. And the Comforter, even the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.' 'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all the truth[307].'

Thus the Church sees in the Apostles men specially and deliberately qualified to interpret Christ to the world. It understands by their inspiration an endowment which enables men of all ages to take their teaching as representing, and not misrepresenting, His teaching and Himself. In S. John's Gospel, for example, we have an account of our Lord which has obviously passed through the medium of a most remarkable personality. We have the outcome of the meditation, as well as the recollection, of the Apostle. But, as the evidence assures us that the Gospel is really S. John's, so the Church unhesitatingly accepts S. John's strong and repeated asseveration that he is interpreting and not distorting the record, the personality, the claims of Jesus Christ. 'He bears record, and his record is true[308].'

This assurance is indeed not without verification: it is verified by the unity of testimony which, under all differences of character and circumstance, we find among the apostolic witnesses. The accepted doctrine of the Church when S. Paul wrote his 'undoubted Epistles,'--the points of agreement amidst all differences between him and the Judaizers--gives us substantially the same conception of the Person of the Incarnate Son of God as we find in S. John[309]. The same conception of what He was, is required to interpret the record of what He did and said in the Synoptic Gospels. Further, the witness of the Apostles, though it receives its final guarantee through the belief in their inspiration, has its natural basis in the prolonged training by which--'companying with them all the time that He went in and out among them, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day that He was received up,'--they were prepared to be His witnesses. Thus if an act of faith is asked of us in the apostolic inspiration, it is a reasonable act of faith.

If we pass from the writings properly apostolic to those like S. Luke's records, which represent apostolic teaching at second hand, we do not find that the inspiration of their writers was of such sort as enabled them to dispense with the ordinary means or guarantees of accuracy. The simple claim of S. Luke's preface to have had the best means of information and to have taken the greatest care in the use of them, is on this score most instructive. We should suppose that their inspiration was part of the whole spiritual endowment of their life which made them the trusted friends of the Apostles, and qualified them to be the chosen instruments to record their teaching, in the midst of a Church whose quick and eager memory of 'the tradition' would have acted as a check to prevent any material error creeping into the record.

4. It will be remembered that when inspiration is spoken of by S. Paul, he mentions it as a positive endowment which qualifies the writings of those who were its subjects, to be permanent sources of spiritual instruction. 'Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness[310].' Following out this idea of Holy Scripture then, we are led to think of the belief in inspiration as having this primary practical result: that we submit ourselves to the teaching of every book which is given to us as inspired. We are to put ourselves to school with each in turn of the inspired writers; with S. James, for example, in the New Testament, as well as with S. John and S. Paul; with S. Luke as well as with S. Matthew; with the Pastoral Epistles as well as with the Epistle to the Galatians[311]. At starting each of us, according to his predisposition, is conscious of liking some books of Scripture better than others. This, however, should lead us to recognise that in some way we specially need the teaching which is less attractive to us. We should set ourselves to study what we like less, till that too has had its proper effect in moulding our conscience and character. It is hardly possible to estimate how much division would have been avoided in the Church if those, for example, who were most ecclesiastically disposed had been at pains to assimilate the teaching of the Epistle to the Romans, and those who most valued 'the freedom of the Gospel' had recognised a special obligation to deepen their hold on the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle of S. James.

To believe in the inspiration of Holy Scripture is to put ourselves to school with every part of the Old Testament, as of the New. True, the Old Testament is imperfect, but for that very reason has a special value. 'The real use of the earlier record is not to add something to the things revealed in Christ, but to give us that clear and all-sided insight into the meaning and practical worth of the perfect scheme of Divine grace which can only be attained by tracing its growth[312].' We see in the Old Testament the elements, each in separation, which went to make up the perfect whole, and which must still lie at the basis of all rightly formed life of individuals and societies.

Thus to believe, for instance, in the inspiration of the Old Testament forces us to recognise a real element of the Divine education in the imprecatory Psalms. They are not the utterances of selfish spite[313]: they are the claim which righteous Israel makes upon God that He should vindicate Himself, and let their eyes see how 'righteousness turns again unto judgment.' The claim is made in a form which belongs to an early stage of spiritual education; to a time when _this life_ was regarded as the scene in which God must finally vindicate Himself, and when the large powers and possibilities of the Divine compassion were very imperfectly recognised. But behind these limitations, which characterize the greater part of the Old Testament, the claim of these Psalms still remains a necessary part of the claim of the Christian soul. We must not only recognise the reality of Divine judgments in time and eternity, bodily and spiritual; we must not only acquiesce in them because they are God's; we must go on to claim of God the manifestation of His just judgment, so that holiness and joy, sin and failure, shall be seen to coincide.

To recognise then the inspiration of the Bible is to put ourselves to school in every part of it, and everywhere to bear in mind the admonition of the _De Imitatione_ 'that every Scripture must be read in the same spirit in which it was written.' So far it will not be a point in dispute among Christians what inspiration means, or what its purpose is. 'The Councils of Trent and the Vatican,' writes Cardinal Newman, 'tell us distinctly the object and the promise of Scriptural inspiration. They specify "faith and moral conduct" as the drift of that teaching which has the guarantee of inspiration[314].' Nor can it be denied that the more Holy Scripture is read from this point of view, the more confidently it is treated as the inspired guide of faith and conduct, no less in the types of character which it sets before us than in its direct instruction, the more the experience and appreciation of its inspiration grows upon us, so that to deny or to doubt it comes to mean to deny or to doubt a matter plain to the senses. Indeed what has been said under this head will probably appear to those practised in the spiritual use of Holy Scripture as an understatement, perhaps not easy to justify, of the sense in which the Scripture is the Word of God, and the spiritual food of the soul[315].

5. But here certain important questions arise. (_a_) The revelation of God was made in a historical process. Its record is in large part the record of a national life: it is historical. Now the inspiration of the recorder lies, as we have seen, primarily in this, that he sees the hand of God in the history and interprets His purpose. Further, we must add, his sense of the working of God in history, increases his realization of the importance of historical fact. Thus there is a profound air of historical truthfulness pervading the Old Testament record from Abraham downward. The weaknesses, the sins, of Israel's heroes are not spared. Their sin and its punishment is always before us. There is no flattering of national pride, no giving the reins to boastfulness. In all this the Old Testament appears to be in marked contrast, as to contemporary Assyrian monuments, so also to a good deal of much later ecclesiastical history. But does the inspiration of the recorder guarantee the exact historical truth of what he records? And in matter of fact can the record, with due regard to legitimate historical criticism, be pronounced true? Now, to the latter of these two questions (and they are quite distinct questions), we may reply that there is nothing to prevent our believing, as our faith certainly strongly disposes us to believe, that the record from Abraham downward is in substance in the strict sense historical. Of course the battle of historical truth cannot be fought on the field of the Old Testament, as it can on that of the New, because it is so vast and indecisive, and because (however certainly ancient is such a narrative as that contained in Genesis xiv.) very little of the early record can be securely traced to a period near the events. Thus the Church cannot _insist upon_ the historical character of the earliest records of the ancient Church in detail, as she can on the historical character of the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles. On the other hand, as it seems the more probable opinion that the Hebrews must have been acquainted with the art of writing in some form long before the Exodus, there is no reason to doubt the existence of some written records among them from very early days[316]. Internal evidence again certainly commends to our acceptance the history of the patriarchs, of the Egyptian bondage, of the great redemption, of the wanderings, as well as of the later period as to which there would be less dispute. In a word we are, we believe, not wrong in anticipating that the Church will continue to believe and to teach that the Old Testament from Abraham downwards is really historical, and that there will be nothing to make such belief and teaching unreasonable or wilful. But within the limits of what is substantially historical, there is still room for an admixture of what, though marked by spiritual purpose, is yet not strictly historical--for instance, for a feature which characterizes all early history, the attribution to first founders of what is really the remoter result of their institutions. Now historical criticism[317] assures us that this process has been largely at work in the Pentateuch. By an analysis, for instance, the force of which is very great, it distinguishes distinct stages in the growth of the law of worship: at least an early stage such as is represented in 'the Book of the Covenant[318],' a second stage in the Book of Deuteronomy, a last stage in 'the Priestly Code.' What we may suppose to have happened is that Moses himself established a certain germ of ceremonial enactment in connection with the ark and its sacred tent, and with the 'ten words'; and that this developed always as 'the law of Moses,' the whole result being constantly attributed, probably unconsciously and certainly not from any intention to deceive, to the original founder. This view would certainly imply that the recorders of Israel's history were subject to the ordinary laws in the estimate of evidence, that their inspiration did not consist in a miraculous communication to them of facts as they originally happened: but if we believe that the law, as it grew, really did represent the Divine intention for the Jews, gradually worked out upon the basis of a Mosaic institution, there is nothing materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the Divine command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the collection of Psalms to David and of Proverbs to Solomon. Nor does the supposition that the law was of gradual growth interfere in any way with the symbolical and typical value of its various ordinances.

Once again, the same school of criticism would assure us that the Books of Chronicles represent a later and less historical version of Israel's history than that given in Samuel and Kings[319]: they represent, according to this view, the version of that history which had become current in the priestly schools. What we are asked to admit is not conscious perversion, but unconscious idealizing of history, the reading back into past records of a ritual development which was really later. Now inspiration excludes conscious deception or pious fraud, but it appears to be quite consistent with this sort of idealizing; always supposing that the result read back into the earlier history does represent the real purpose of God and only anticipates its realization.

Here then is one great question. Inspiration certainly means the illumination of the judgment of the recorder. 'By the contact of the Holy Spirit,' says Origen, 'they became clearer in their mental perceptions, and their souls were filled with a brighter light[320].' But have we any reason to believe that it means, over and above this, the miraculous communication of facts not otherwise to be known, a miraculous communication such as would make the recorder independent of the ordinary processes of historical tradition? Certainly neither S. Luke's preface to his Gospel, nor the evidence of any inspired record, justifies us in this assumption. Nor would it appear that spiritual illumination, even in the highest degree, has any tendency to lift men out of the natural conditions of knowledge which belong to their time. Certainly in the similar case of exegesis, it would appear that S. Paul is left to the method of his time, though he uses it with inspired insight into the function and meaning of law and of prophecy as a whole. Thus, without pronouncing an opinion, where we have no right to do so, on the critical questions at present under discussion, we may maintain with considerable assurance that there is nothing in the doctrine of inspiration to prevent our recognising a considerable idealizing element in the Old Testament history. The reason is of course obvious enough why what can be admitted in the Old Testament, could not without results disastrous to the Christian Creed, be admitted in the New. It is because the Old Testament is the record of how God produced a need, or anticipation, or ideal, while the New Testament records how in fact He satisfied it. The absolute coincidence of idea and fact is vital in the realization, not in the preparation for it. It is equally obvious, too, that where fact is of supreme importance, as in the New Testament, the evidence has none of the ambiguity or remoteness which belongs to much of the record of the preparation.

(_b_) But once again; we find all sorts of literature in the inspired volume: men can be inspired to think and to write for God under all the forms of natural genius. Now one form of genius is the dramatic: its essence is to make characters, real or imaginary, the vehicles for an ideal presentation. It presents embodied ideas. Now the Song of Solomon is of the nature of a drama. The Book of Job, although it works on an historical basis, is, it can hardly be denied, mainly dramatic. The Book of Wisdom, which with us is among the books of the Bible, though in the second rank outside the canon, and which is inside the canon of the Roman Church, professes to be written by Solomon[321], but is certainly written not by him, but in his person by another author. We may then conceive the same to be true of Ecclesiastes, and of Deuteronomy; i.e. we may suppose Deuteronomy to be a republication of the law 'in the spirit and power' of Moses put dramatically into his mouth. Criticism goes further, and asks us to regard Jonah and Daniel, among the prophetic books, as dramatic compositions worked up on a basis of history. The discussion of these books has often been approached from a point of view from which the miraculous is necessarily unhistorical. With such a point of view we are not concerned. The possibility and reality of miracles has to be vindicated first of all in the field of the New Testament; and one who admits them there, cannot reasonably exclude their possibility in the earlier history. The question must be treated simply on literary and evidential grounds[322]. But we would contend that if criticism should shew these books to be probably dramatic, that would be no hindrance to their performing 'an important canonical function,' or to their being inspired. Dramatic composition has played an immense part in training the human mind. It is as far removed as possible from a violation of truth, though in an uncritical age its results may very soon pass for history. It admits of being inspired as much as poetry, or history, and indeed there are few who could feel a difficulty in recognising as inspired the teaching of the books of Jonah and Daniel[323]. It is maintained then that the Church leaves open to literary criticism the question whether several of the writings of the Old Testament are or are not dramatic. Certainly the fact that they have not commonly been taken to be so in the past will be no evidence to the contrary, unless it can be denied that a literary criticism is being developed, which is as really new an intellectual product as the scientific development, and as such, certain to reverse a good many of the literary judgments of previous ages. We are being asked to make considerable changes in our literary conception of the Scriptures, but not greater changes than were involved in the acceptance of the heliocentric astronomy.

(_c_) Once again: an enlarged study of comparative history has led to our perceiving that the various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet distinguished into history, and poetry, and philosophy. It is all of these in the germ, as dream and imagination, and thought and experience, are fused in the mental furniture of a child's mind. 'These myths or current stories,' says Grote writing of Greek history, 'the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Greek mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged; containing as it were the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace, each in its separate development.' Now has the Jewish history such earlier stage: does it pass back out of history into myth? In particular, are not its earlier narratives, before the call of Abraham, of the nature of myth, in which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not at all deny that it exists? The inspiration of these narratives is as conspicuous as that of any part of Scripture, but is there anything to prevent our regarding these great inspirations about the origin of all things,--the nature of sin, the judgment of God on sin, and the alienation among men which follows their alienation from God,--as conveyed to us in that form of myth or allegorical picture, which is the earliest mode in which the mind of man apprehended truth?

6. In spite of the arbitrariness and the irreligion which have often been associated with the modern development of historical criticism in its application to the Old Testament, the present writer believes that it represents none the less a real advance in literary analysis, and is reaching results as sure, where it is fairly used, as scientific inquiry, though the results in the one case as in the other are often hard to disentangle from their less permanent accompaniments. Believing this, and feeling in consequence that the warning which the name of Galileo must ever bring before the memory of churchmen, is not unneeded now, he believes also that the Church is in no way restrained from admitting the modifications just hinted at, in what has latterly been the current idea of inspiration.

The Church is not restrained, in the first place, by having committed herself to any dogmatic definitions of the meaning of inspiration[324]. It is remarkable indeed that Origen's almost reckless mysticism, and his accompanying repudiation of the historical character of large parts of the narrative of the Old Testament, and of some parts of the New[325], though it did not gain acceptance, and indeed had no right to it (for it had no sound basis), on the other hand never roused the Church to contrary definitions. Nor is it only Origen who disputed the historical character of parts of the narrative of Holy Scripture. Clement before him in Alexandria, and the mediaeval Anselm in the West, treat the seven days' creation as allegory and not history. Athanasius speaks of paradise as a 'figure.' A mediaeval Greek writer, who had more of Irenaeus than remains to us, declared that 'he did not know how those who kept to the letter and took the account of the temptation historically rather than allegorically, could meet the arguments of Irenaeus against them.' Further than this, it cannot be denied that the mystical method, as a whole, tended to the depreciation of the historical sense, in comparison with the spiritual teaching which it conveyed[326]. In a different line, Chrysostom, of the literal school of interpreters, explains quite in the tone of a modern apologist, how the discrepancies in detail between the different Gospels, assure us of the independence of the witnesses, and do not touch the facts of importance, in which all agree.

The Church is not tied then by any existing definitions. We cannot make any exact claim upon any one's belief in regard to inspiration, simply because we have no authoritative definition to bring to bear upon him. Those of us who believe most in the inspiration of the Church, will see a Divine Providence in this absence of dogma, because we shall perceive that only now is the state of knowledge such as admits of the question being legitimately raised.

Nor does it seem that the use which our Lord made of the Old Testament is an argument against the proposed concessions. Our Lord, in His use of the Old Testament, does indeed endorse with the utmost emphasis the Jewish view of their own history. He does thus imply, on the one hand, the real inspiration of their canon in its completeness, and, on the other hand, that He Himself was the goal of that inspired leading and the standard of that inspiration. 'Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day:' 'I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' This, and it is the important matter for all that concerns our spiritual education, is not in dispute. What is questioned is that our Lord's words foreclose certain critical positions as to the character of Old Testament literature. For example, does His use of Jonah's resurrection, as a _type_ of His own, depend in any real degree upon whether it is historical fact or allegory[327]? It is of the essence of a type to _suggest_ an idea, as of the antitype to _realize_ it. The narrative of Jonah suggested certainly the idea of resurrection after three days, of triumph over death, and by suggesting this gave our Lord what His discourse required. Once more, our Lord uses the time before the flood[328] to illustrate the carelessness of men before His own coming. He is using the flood here as a typical judgment, as elsewhere He uses other contemporary visitations for a like purpose. In referring to the flood He certainly suggests that He is treating it as typical, for He introduces circumstances--'eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage'--which have no counterpart in the original narrative. Nothing in His use of it depends on its being more than a typical instance. Once more, He argues with the Pharisees on the assumption of the Davidic authorship of Psalm cx[329]. But it must be noticed that He is asking a question rather than making a statement--a question, moreover, which does not admit of being turned into a statement without suggesting the conclusion, of which rationalistic critics have not hesitated to avail themselves, that David's Lord could not be David's son. There are, we notice, other occasions when our Lord asked questions which cannot be made the basis of positive propositions[330]. It was in fact part of His method to lead men to examine their own principles without at the time suggesting any positive conclusion at all.

It may also fairly be represented, on a review of our Lord's teaching as a whole, that if He had intended to convey instruction to us on critical and literary questions, He would have made His purpose plainer. It is contrary to His whole method to reveal His Godhead by any anticipations of natural knowledge. The Incarnation was a self-emptying of God to reveal Himself under conditions of human nature and from the human point of view. We are able to draw a distinction between what He revealed and what He used. He revealed God, His mind, His character, His claim, within certain limits His Threefold Being: He revealed man, his sinfulness, his need, his capacity: He revealed His purpose of redemption, and founded His Church as a home in which man was to be through all the ages reconciled to God in knowledge and love. All this He revealed, but through, and under conditions of, a true human nature. Thus He _used_ human nature, its relation to God, its conditions of experience, its growth in knowledge, its limitation of knowledge[331]. He feels as we men ought to feel: he sees as we ought to see. We can thus distinguish more or less between the Divine truth which He reveals, and the human nature which He uses. Now when He speaks of the 'sun rising' He is using ordinary human knowledge. He willed so to restrain the beams of Deity as to observe the limits of the science of His age, and He puts Himself in the same relation to its historical knowledge. Thus He does not reveal His eternity by statements as to what had happened in the past, or was to happen in the future, outside the ken of existing history[332]. He made His Godhead gradually manifest by His attitude towards men and things about Him, by His moral and spiritual claims, by His expressed relation to His Father, not by any miraculous exemptions of Himself from the conditions of natural knowledge in its own proper province. Thus the utterances of Christ about the Old Testament do not seem to be nearly definite or clear enough to allow of our supposing that in this case He is departing from the general method of the Incarnation, by bringing to bear the unveiled omniscience of the Godhead, to anticipate or foreclose a development of natural knowledge.

But if we thus plead that theology may leave the field open for free discussion of these questions which Biblical criticism has recently been raising, we shall probably be bidden to 'remember Tübingen,' and not be over-trustful of a criticism which at least exhibits in some of its most prominent representatives a great deal of arbitrariness, of love of 'new views' for their own sake, and a great lack of that reverence and spiritual insight which is at least as much needed for understanding the books of the Bible, as accurate knowledge and fair investigation. To this the present writer would be disposed to reply that, if the Christian Church has been enabled to defeat the critical attack, so far as it threatened destruction to the historical basis of the New Testament, it has not been by foreclosing the question with an appeal to dogma, but by facing in fair and frank discussion the problems raised. A similar treatment of Old Testament problems will enable us to distinguish between what is reasonable and reverent, and what is high-handed and irreligious in contemporary criticism whether German, French, or English. Even in regard to what makes _prima facie_ a reasonable claim, we do not prejudice the decision by declaring the field open: in all probability there will always remain more than one school of legitimate opinion on the subject: indeed the purpose of the latter part of this essay has not been to inquire how much we can without irrationality believe inspiration to involve; but rather, how much may legitimately and without real loss be conceded. For, without doubt, if consistently with entire loyalty to our Lord and His Church, we can regard as open the questions specified above, we are removing great obstacles from the path to belief of many who certainly wish to believe, and do not exhibit any undue scepticism. Nor does there appear to be any real danger that the criticism of the Old Testament will ultimately diminish our reverence for it. In the case of the New Testament certainly we are justified in feeling that modern investigation has resulted in immensely augmenting our understanding of the different books, and has distinctly fortified and enriched our sense of their inspiration. Why then should we hesitate to believe that the similar investigation of the Old Testament will in its result similarly enrich our sense that 'God in divers portions and divers manners spake of old times unto the fathers,' and that the Inspiration of Holy Scriptures will always be recognised as the most conspicuous of the modes in which the Holy Spirit has mercifully wrought for the illumination and encouragement of our race?

'For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.'

[248] Cyprian, _ad Donatum_ 3. Trans. in _Library of the Fathers_, iii. p. 3.

[249] Athanasius, _de Incarnatione_, 31, 48-52.

[250] See S. Basil's fine definition of the term in his treatise _on the Holy Spirit_, ix. 22. This treatise has been translated by the Rev. G. Lewis for the 'Religious Tract Society.'

[251] See Basil, as above, xvi. 37: 'We must not suppose because the Apostle (1 Cor. xii. 4) mentions the Spirit first, and the Son second, and God the Father third, that the order at the present day has been quite reversed. For he made his beginning from our end of the relation: for it is by receiving the gifts, that we come in contact with the Distributor; then we come to consider the Sender; then we carry back our thought to the Fount and Cause of the good things.' Cf. xviii. 47: 'The way of the knowledge of God is from one Spirit, by the one Son, to the one Father: and reversely, the natural goodness of God, His holiness of nature, His royal rank taking their rise from the Father, reach the Spirit though the Only-begotten.'

[252] Ambrose, _de Spiritu Sancto_, i. 15, 172.

[253] So Irenaeus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Basil, Didymus, Victorinus, express the relation of the Divine Persons in Creation.

[254] Ps. xxxiii. 6; Gen. i. 2; Ps. civ. 29, 30.

[255] Huet. _Origeniana, L._ ii. _Qu._ 2. c. xxvii. Cf. Athan. _Epp. ad Serapion_. i. 23-31; iv. 9-12.

[256] Gen. ii. 7.

[257] Athan. _de Incarn._ xliii. 3.

[258] Athan. _l.c._ xii. 5, xliii. 4.

[259] Iren. _c. Haer._ iii. 17, 1.

[260] S. Mark i. 10, 12. S. Luke iv. 1, 18; x. 21. S. Matt. xii. 28. Heb. ix. 14. Rom. viii. 11. (These two last passages at least imply the action of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrifice and Resurrection of Christ.)

[261] Heb. v. 7-10. Phil. ii. 8.

[262] 1 Cor. xv. 45, 'The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.' S. John vi. 63, 'Spirit and Life.'

[263] Iren. iii. 18, 1, and frequently elsewhere.

[264] Iren. iii. 24, 1. Cf. H. C. G. Moule's _Veni Creator_, pp. 39-40.

[265] S. John iii. 4. The intention of this passage is to express not that the Spirit is lawless in His operations, but that He is beyond our control.

[266] Aug. _de Spiritu et Littera_, xxvii. 47, 'Grace is not the negation of nature, but its restoration.'

[267] Raymund of Sabunde, _Theol. Nat._ tit. 303.

[268] Basil, _de Spiritu Sancto_ ix. 23 (Lewis' translation). Cf. Newman's _Univ. Sermons_, 'Personal Influence the means of propagating the truth.'

[269] Cyril, _Catech._ xvi. 12. The attention to the differences of individual character is very noticeable in S. Basil's monastic rule: see the _Regulae fusius tractatae_, resp. 19, and the _Constit. Monast._ 4. Also in the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, and Gregory the Great _on the Pastoral Office_.

[270] 1 Cor. ii. 15. 1 S. John ii. 20-27.

[271] Clement Alex. _Strom._ v. 13. 88.

[272] _Republic_, 401 D, 402 A.

[273] Caird's _Hegel_ (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), p. 72.

[274] Anselm, _Proslog._ 4; he adds, 'So that even if I were unwilling to _believe_ that Thou art, I could not cease to understand it.' But the whole relation of authority and reason is most completely grasped and stated by S. Augustine: see Cunningham, _S. Austin_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1886), pp. 9, 157 ff.

[275] Dr. Salmon, _Infallibility_, p. 115, has a clever comparison of the authority of the Church to that of the town clock. The value we assign to having such an authoritative standard of the right time does not prevent our recognising the importance of having it regulated. 'And if we desired to remove an error which had accumulated during a long season of neglect, it would be very unfair to represent us as wishing to silence the clock, or else as wishing to allow every townsman to get up and push the hands backwards and forwards as he pleased.'

[276] But cf. pp. 196-8, 229-232, 258-260.

[277] Manning, _Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost_, third edit. pp. 9, 29, 238-240.

[278] See, for instance, _c. Haer._ v. 10, 2. 'The wild olive does not change its substance [when it is grafted in, see Rom. xi. 17], but only the quality of its fruit, and takes a new name, no longer being called an oleaster but an olive; so also man when he is by faith grafted in, and receives the Spirit of God, does not lose his fleshly substance, but changes the quality of the works which are his fruits, and takes another name indicating his improved condition, and is no longer described as flesh and blood, but as a spiritual man.' So also v. 6, 1, 'whom the apostle calls "spiritual" because they have the Spirit, not because they have been robbed of the flesh and become bare spirit.' It is the recognition of this principle that makes most of the language of the Fathers on fasting so healthy and sensible. The end of fasting is not to destroy the flesh, but to free the spirit.

[279] See especially Mozley's _Lectures on the Old Testament_, x.: 'The end the test of progressive revelation.'

[280] Greg. Naz. _Orat._ xxxi. 25. Many of the greatest of the ancient Christian writers depreciate the sacrificial law as a mere concession, made to avoid worse things, when the incident of the calf shewed that the first legislation of the Ten Commandments was too spiritual: so Jerome _in Isai._ 1, 12, _In Jer._ vii. 21. Cf. Justin, _Trypho_ 19. Chrys. _adv. Jud._ iv. 6. Epiphan. _Haer._ lxvi. 71. _Constt. ap._ i. 6; vi. 20. This method of interpretation is perhaps derived from the Epistle of Barnabas, 2-4.

[281] Chrys. _in Matth. Homil._ xvii. 5-6 (slightly abbreviated). Cf. _Libell. Faustin. et Marcellin._ in _Bibl. Vet. Patrum._ tom. v. 657 d.

[282] _On the Holy Spirit_, xiv. 33 (Lewis' trans.).

[283] Aug. _de Trin._ i. 10, 21. This principle alone gives a basis for the doctrine of 'imputation' so far as it is true. God deals with us, e.g. in absolution, by anticipation of what is to come about in us, in Christ.

[284] Thom. Aq. _Summa Theol._ pars sec. sec. Qu. 1. Art. ix.

[285] The above paragraph is a summary of expressions constantly met with in the Fathers. It is S. Ambrose who protests against the idea that the priest can be spoken of as having power over the Divine Things which he ministers, see _De Spiritu Sancto_, praef. 18, lib. i. 11, 118: 'nostra sunt servitia sed tua sacramenta. Neque enim humanae opis est divina conferre.' S. Augustine, among others, draws the distinction between gifts from the Spirit and the gift of Himself. _Ep._ cxciv.: 'aliter adiuvat nondum inhabitans, aliter inhabitans: nam nondum inhabitans adiuvat ut sint fideles, inhabitans adiuvat iam fideles.' Didymus, _de Spiritu Sancto_ 15, calls attention to the distinction in the New Testament between πνεῦμα (without the article) i.e. 'a spiritual gift,' and τὸ πνεῦμα, i.e. the Spirit Himself: cf. Westcott on S. John vii. 39.

[286] Greg. Naz. _Orat._ xxxi. 8.

[287] See Athan. _Epp. ad Serapion._ i. 17. Cyril Hieros. _Cat._ xvi. 24. Iren. v. 13, 2. Basil, _de Spiritu Sancto_, iii. 5.

[288] The _Dict. of Chr. Biog._, Art. HOLY GHOST (by Dr. Swete), has an admirable summary of the theology of the subject.

[289] See Godet on S. John xv. 26, 27.

[290] Athan. _Epp. ad Serap._ i. 19. S. John xiv. 16, 18, 23.

[291] Plato's human trinity is made up of reason, spirit [θυμός], and desire: S. Augustine's of memory (i.e. personal identity), reason, and will; or mind, knowledge, and love. Nothing has been said in the text of Patristic and more recent attempts to express the function of the Holy Spirit in the inner relations of the Trinity. Some of the Fathers speak of the Holy Spirit as completing the circle of the Divine Life, or as 'the return of God upon Himself,' 'the bond of the Father and the Son.' This eternal function would interpret His temporal mission to bring all creatures back into union with God. Not very differently S. Augustine speaks of Him as the Love of the Father and the Son: 'Vides Trinitatem si caritatem vides. Ecce tria sunt; amans et quod amatur et amor.' And this Love is itself personal and coordinate: 'commune aliquid est Patris et Filii; at ipsa communio consubstantialis et coaeterna.' But in such speculation they allow themselves with much reserve and expression of unwillingness.

In fact it is easy to see that an eternally living God, knowing and loving, must be a God Whose Being involves eternal relationships. Knowledge involves a relation of subject and object: to make love possible there must be a lover and a loved. It is more difficult to see how a perfect relationship must be threefold; but there are true lines of thought which lead up to this, such, for instance, as make us see first in the family, the type of complete life. Love which is only a relation of two, is selfish or unsatisfied: it demands an object and a product of mutual love. See especially Richard of S. Victor, _de Trin._ Pars i. lib. iii. cc. 14, 15: 'Communio amoris non potest esse omnino minus quam in tribus personis. Nihil autem (ut dictum est) gloriosius, nihil magnificentius, quam quicquid habes utile et dulce _in commune deducere_: ... hujusmodi dulcedinis delicias solus non possidet qui in exhibita sibi dilectione socium _et condilectum_ non habet; quamdiu _condilectum_ non habet, praecipui gaudii communione caret.' See also Sartorius, _Doctrine of Divine Love_ (Clark's Foreign Theol. Libr.), p. 16.

[292] _Microcosmus_, B. ix. C. iv. (E. T. vol. ii. p. 660.)

[293] See especially Gal. i. 8, 9.

[294] Heb. ii. 3.

[295] See further on the fatal results of separating the Spirit's work in Scripture, from His work in the Church, Coleridge, _Remains_ iii. 93, iv. 118; or quoted by Hare, _Mission of the Comforter_, Note H. vol. ii. pp. 468, 474.

[296] This distinction was drawn by Bishop Clifford, _Fortnightly Review_, Jan. 1887, p. 145.